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The  Amouretta  Landscape       | 
And  Other  Stories 


By  Adeline  Adams 


ia 


.  OF  CAUF.  UMARY.  LOS  ANGELES 


THE  AMOURETTA  LANDSCAPE 
AND  OTHER  STORIES 


The 

Amouretta  Landscape 
And  Other  Stories 


By 

Adeline  Adams 


Boston  and  New  York 

Houghton  Mifflin  Company 

Ctjt  &{ber«fee  $rt««  Cambrfcgt 

1922 


COPYRIGHT,  1922,  BY  ADELINE  ADAMS 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


$rr«« 

CAMBRIDGE  •  MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED  IN  THE  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 

THE  AMOURETTA  LANDSCAPE  i 

BITS  OF  CLAY  45 

THE  YOUNG  LADY  IN  BLUE  57 

"C'EST  UNE  TAUPE"  96 

THEIR  APPOINTED  ROUNDS  105 

SPEAKING  OF  ANGELS  141 

THE  MARQUIS  GOES  DONKEY-RIDING  168 

THE  FACE  CALLED  FORGIVENESS  198 

THE  ARTIST'S  BIRTHDAY'  228 


2125402 


THE  AMOURETTA  LANDSCAPE 

I 

IF  you  search  from  Greenwich  Village  to  Law- 
rence Park,  and  then  from  Turtle  Bay  to 
Chelsea,  you  will  not  find  in  all  New  York  a 
painter  less  spoiled  by  fame  than  Maurice  Price. 
It  was  in  his  nature  to  know  from  the  very  first 
that  the  luckier  you  are,  the  kinder  you  can  be. 
I  do  not  regard  it  as  a  limitation  that  in  what  he 
does  and  in  what  he  wears  he  scarcely  satisfies 
the  romantic  ideal  about  artists  and  their  ways. 
There  is  nothing  wild  in  his  attire,  and  he  does 
not  live  more  dangerously  than  other  citizens 
must.  Still,  there  is  something  about  his  type  of 
good  looks  that  sets  him  apart  and  gives  him 
away.  Those  who  see  him  for  the  first  time,  in 
profile,  whether  at  the  Follies  or  at  a  funeral  of 
an  Academician,  sometimes  think  that  if  they 
knew  the  man,  they  would  esteem  him  more 
than  they  would  love  him.  That  is  because  they 
have  not  yet  met  him  in  front  view,  and  dis- 
covered the  eager  friendliness  in  his  gray  eyes,  the 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

sensitive,  listening  expression  of  his  whole  face; 
the  look  that  says,  "Tell  me  your  joke  in  life,  and 
I'll  tell  mine."  His  merry  young  wife  had  once 
declared  that  there  were  only  two  things  that 
saved  his  head  from  an  intolerable  Greek  god- 
dishness.  Maurice's  curiosity  was  roused,  but  the 
girl  had  kept  him  guessing  until  the  end  of  the 
week,  when  she  explained  that  one  of  the  things 
was  his  right  ear,  the  other,  his  left;  both  of  them 
stuck  out  more  than  the  classic  law  allowed;  just 
as  well,  too;  since,  for  her  part,  she  had  preferred 
to  marry  a  man,  not  an  archangel  or  a  Greek  coin. 
The  man  smiled,  and  kept  on  painting. 

A  time  came  when  Maurice  Price,  suddenly 
finding  himself  in  a  new  environment,  remem- 
bered that  in  ten  years  he  had  not  once  painted  a 
landscape  from  nature.  As  he  stood  in  the  wide 
doorway  of  his  friend's  country  studio,  and 
gazed  with  delight  at  the  springtime  beauty  of 
the  New  Hampshire  hills  flung  down  at  his  feet, 
the  fact  that  during  a  whole  decade  his  painting 
had  been  done  within  doors  and  under  glass 
struck  him  as  an  absurdity,  even  a  reproach. 
Ah,  well,  those  who  go  about  calling  ten  years  a 
whole  decade  must  expect  reproach,  he  reasoned. 
They  bring  it  on  themselves. 

[2] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

Besides,  the  situation  was  explicable  enough. 
Ever  since  he  and  his  wife  had  said  good-bye 
to  their  cottage  near  Fontainebleau,  exchanging 
the  joys  of  study  in  France  for  the  responsi- 
bilities of  family  life  in  their  own  land,  his  work 
had  been  chiefly  portraits,  with  an  occasional 
welcome  mural  decoration  to  break  the  monot- 
ony of  rosy  lips,  shimmering  pearls,  crisp  satins; 
of  academic  robes,  frock  coats,  tennis  trousers, 
and  whatever  else  a  modern  portrait-painter 
must  cope  valiantly  with,  on  canvas.  Not  that 
Maurice  was  weary  of  his  good  fortune  hi  having 
portraits  to  do.  He  often  said,  with  that  frank 
yet  pensive  smile  of  his,  that  every  sitter  on 
earth  has  some  personal  quality  which,  if  seen 
aright,  can  alleviate  if  not  actually  elevate  our 
art.  Hence,  after  every  excursion  into  the  field 
of  mural  decoration,  he  returned  with  new  zest 
to  his  girls  with  pearls,  his  dowagers,  his  bankers; 
while  after  every  surfeit  of  our  common  hu- 
manity as  shown  up  in  a  north  light,  he  seized 
with  ardor  the  chance  to  depict  on  the  walls  of 
some  library  or  court-house  those  various  fables 
of  antiquity  which  seem  to  shed  the  most  pleas- 
ing light  on  the  fables  of  our  modern  civilization. 
But  never  a  landscape! 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

Naturally,  his  decorations  and  even  his  por- 
traits often  had  landscape  backgrounds.  Fancy 
our  Agriculture  without  her  wheatfields,  or  our 
Mining  Industry  without  her  tumbled  hills,  or 
a  Bridal  at  Glen  Cove  without  blue  skies,  lovely 
leafage,  a  beauty-haunted  marble  vase,  a  teasing 
vista  where  Pan  might  lurk  unseen!  But  very 
properly,  such  backgrounds  as  these  were  merely 
arrangements,  or,  as  one  might  say,  apt  quota- 
tions from  nature;  they  did  not  pretend  to  report 
passionate  personal  interviews  with  her.  Maurice 
Price  loved  to  paint  such  backgrounds.  Whether 
in  a  tranquil  or  a  stormy  mood,  he  always  kept 
the  hope  of  distilling  beauty  for  the  ages.  And 
he  knew  that  the  backgrounds  had  their  part  in 
that  enterprise  of  his. 

In  his  golden  twenties,  he  had  been  a  singu- 
larly diligent  lover  and  student  of  landscape. 
Many  an  elder  painter  might  have  envied  him 
his  portfolios  stuffed  with  first-hand  information 
and  first-hand  illusion  concerning  rocks  and  seas, 
skies  and  fields,  trees  and  hills,  and  all  the  rain- 
bow hues  and  lights  and  darks  that  visited  them 
in  their  repose,  their  shifting  moods,  their  crises. 
Maurice  in  the  late  thirties  often  stood  in  awe  of 
that  far-off  Maurice  of  the  early  twenties,  who 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

seemed  to  know  so  much  even  then  of  the 
painter's  magic  book  of  all  outdoors.  To-day, 
he  wondered  whether  he  could  beat  his  younger 
self  in  the  game  that  is  played  on  canvas  with 
brushes,  under  the  sky,  with  everything  more  or 
less  astir,  and  nothing  at  all  ever  quite  the  same 
as  it  was  a  moment  before,  least  of  all  hi  its  colors 
and  values. 

After  that  devastating  influenza  of  March,  his 
seldom-needed  doctor  had  ordered  a  few  weeks' 
complete  rest.  "Complete  piffle,"  Price  had 
growled.  Nevertheless,  when  his  friend  James 
Anthony,  a  painter  given  to  unexpected  with- 
drawals and  fresh  beginnings  in  art,  had  offered 
him  an  opportunity  for  an  entire  change  of  scene, 
he  had  accepted.  Anthony,  always  as  keen  as 
any  Vibert  or  Abendroth  in  his  pursuit  of  the 
secrets  of  the  old  masters,  had  suddenly  decided 
to  go  abroad  to  study  certain  gums  and  resins 
that  might  eventually  preserve  our  American 
painting  from  destruction.  Anthony  was  like 
that.  He  was  successful  enough  and  wealthy 
enough  to  be  as  whimsically  conscientious  as  he 
pleased  about  pigments  and  surfaces.  He  could 
afford  to  keep  a  bee  in  his  hat,  and  call  it  altruism. 
And  now,  the  bee  having  stung  him  afresh,  that 
[  5  ] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

wonderful  hill  studio  of  his  was  at  Maurice's 
disposal. 

"You  will  be  doing  me  a  favor,"  wrote  Jimmy 
Anthony,  "if  you'll  take  it,  even  for  this  one 
summer.  There  are  two  sculptors  hounding  me 
to  rent  it  to  them,  a  man  and  a  woman.  The  man 
I  can  beat  off,  but  the  woman  will  work  her  will 
and  get  the  place  and  wreck  it  for  me,  if  you  don't 
come  to  the  rescue.  I  can  stand  a  painter's  rub- 
bish, but  sculptors!  No,  no,  not  for  Jimmy.  And 
please  use  up  whatever  you  find  in  the  line  of 
materials.  There 's  nothing  there  of  any  further 
interest  to  me.  You  might  like  all  that  garance 
rose  dore,  and  that  pomegranate  cadmium  I  used 
to  swear  by.  And  those  mahogany  panels  that 
I  had  especially  made.  Do  use  them.  Good  on 
both  sides,  and  bully  for  landscapes." 

When  Price,  after  a  look  of  delight  at  the 
spring  magic  framed  by  the  doorway,  had  turned 
to  examine  his  new  quarters,  he  was  not  sur- 
prised that  Anthony  had  shunned  sculptors  as 
tenants.  He  could  not  imagine  the  litter  of  clay 
and  plaster,  wet  rags  and  greasy  plastiline,  de- 
filing that  spacious  immaculate  hall  and  its  de- 
pendencies, all  contrived  by  his  friend  out  of  a 
hay-barn  and  stable  used  by  the  roadhouse 
[6] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

gentry  of  a  hundred  years  ago.  Boxstalls  made 
excellent  dressing-rooms  for  models.  Harness- 
closets  gave  ample  space  for  easels  and  canvases, 
frames  and  colors.  The  north  light  was  vast,  but 
could  be  curtained  at  any  point.  The  great  door 
of  the  former  hayloft  was  a  proscenium  arch 
through  which  one  could  look  east,  south,  and 
west,  upon  various  enchanted  worlds.  Again  and 
again,  that  southern  picture  called  aloud  to  Price 
to  be  painted.  He  found  himself  saying,  "  I  will ! " 
with  the  exultation  of  a  man  about  to  be  married 
for  the  first  time. 

His  own  materials  had  not  yet  arrived;  his 
wife,  a  doctor-abiding  person,  had  seen  to  that; 
she  too  had  picked  up  that  annoying  slogan,  a 
complete  rest!  Perhaps  Anthony's  closets  would 
give  first  aid.  Yes,  there  were  plenty  of  brushes 
and  colors,  all  in  good  condition;  easels  great 
and  small;  and  such  a  panoply  of  varnishes  and 
mediums  as  Price  himself  had  never  dreamed 
of  needing.  No  wonder  Anthony's  painting  ran 
rather  hectic,  at  times;  he  had  too  much  stuff  to 
paint  with,  yes,  too  much  by  far.  His  canvases 
were  overdressed,  by  Jove!  Pluming  himself  a 
bit  on  his  own  very  simple  palette,  which  he 
naturally  regarded  as  an  evidence  of  a  higher 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

culture  than  Anthony's  (just  as  the  Doric  lay  in 
literature  is  finer  than  the  Corinthian  ode,  he  told 
himself),  Maurice  picked  out  from  a  bewildering 
variety  the  ten  colors  of  his  heart's  desire,  in- 
cluding the  garance  rose.  He  looked  indulgently, 
but  not  self-indulgently,  on  the  pomegranate 
cadmium,  as  on  a  pretty  lady  he  had  no  wish  to 
flirt  with. 

Still  searching,  he  laughed  outright  to  find  on 
an  upper  shelf  the  selfsame  palette  that  Anthony 
had  so  often  bragged  about,  at  the  Club,  and  (to 
judge  from  its  pristine  appearance)  had  so  sel- 
dom used,  in  the  studio.  It  was  a  rather  large 
palette,  acquired  at  no  small  cost  by  Anthony, 
during  his  period  of  trying  out  dear  Shorty 
Lasar's  theory,  namely:  that  when  seen  on  the 
dull  brownish  wood  of  the  ordinary  palette,  any 
color,  no  matter  how  muddy,  looks  bright  and 
pure,  luring  the  painter  to  his  ruin;  whereas,  when 
shown  on  a  brilliant,  untarnished  surface,  say 
that  of  pearl  or  of  ivory,  the  same  color  is  re- 
vealed at  once  in  all  its  foulness.  "Nothing  like 
mother-of-pearl,"  Jimmy  would  say,  "for  ex- 
posing the  true  soul  of  a  gob  of  paint!"  And 
Anthony's  Club-famous  palette,  which  Maurice 
now  held  in  his  hand,  had  been  inlaid  with  pearl 
[8] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

from  stem  to  stern,  a  splendor  which  had  added 
somewhat  to  its  weight.  Price  balanced  it  be- 
tween thumb  and  fingers,  a  little  patronizingly, 
perhaps,  as  may  well  happen  when  a  man  takes 
up  another's  palette,  especially  a  palette  more 
famed  in  theory  than  in  practice.  Not  that  he 
wanted  to  quarrel  with  the  tools  he  was  lucky 
enough  to  find;  anything  in  reason  would  do. 

As  for  the  mahogany  panels,  he  would  grate- 
fully use  one  of  those,  at  a  pinch.  It  had  not  the 
kind  of  surface  he  preferred,  his  way  being  to  use 
a  rather  absorbent  canvas,  preparing  the  surface 
to  suit  the  needs  of  the  work  in  hand.  But  here 
again,  Maurice  was  not  hide-bound.  Surface 
was  n't  the  only  thing;  it  would  be  a  poor  painter 
who  would  let  a  marvel-landscape  like  that  go 
unpainted,  merely  because  he  had  n't  a  fine  new 
roll  of  canvas  to  slash  into.  He  was  glad  to  find, 
in  that  inexhaustible  closet,  half  a  dozen  of  those 
panels;  bay  wood  or  cherry,  perhaps,  though  his 
friend  always  called  them  mahogany.  Running 
eager  fingers  over  them,  he  found  that  the  one 
he  liked  best  for  size  and  solidity,  for  shape  and 
texture,  had  already  been  used,  on  one  side;  but 
that  mattered  not  at  all.  He  knew  Anthony's 
three-layered  panels;  both  sides  were  good. 
[91 


The  AmoureUa  Landscape 

On  bringing  the  panel  of  his  choice  out  into  the 
full  light,  he  was  first  dazzled  and  then  puzzled 
by  the  painting  on  it.  Was  this  really  Anthony's 
work?  Theory-ridden  as  he  was,  Anthony  had 
certainly  painted  queer  stuff,  at  times.  But 
Maurice  could  .not  insult  his  friend's  hospitality 
by  taking  this  weird  performance  in  earnest.  Its 
style  out- Jimmied  Jimmy.  Yet  it  seemed  bril- 
liantly familiar;  it  had  Anthony  mannerisms. 

Then  memory  suddenly  turned  her  flashlight 
on  the  thing,  and  told  him  why  it  seemed  familiar. 
Three  years  before,  on  the  eve  of  sailing  for  the 
Front,  he  had  visited  Anthony,  and  the  two  had 
inspired  the  boys  and  girls  of  the  artist  colony 
to  organize  a  "Faker  Show"  for  the  benefit  crt 
the  French  wounded;  children,  models,  and  even 
the  artists  themselves  had  vied  with  each  other 
in  producing  caricatured  art.  The  most  wildly 
acclaimed  piece  had  been  this  very  panel,  painted 
in  a  joyous  hour  by  Anthony's  studio-boy,  Pietro, 
from  Anthony's  model,  Amouretta  McGowan; 
to  save  time,  he  had  used  one  of  his  master's 
discarded  portrait-studies,  and  he  had  kept  the 
characteristic  Anthony  composition  throughout. 

It  was  meant  for  a  portrait,  one  saw,  —  the 
portrait  of  a  woman,  a  hussy,  if  you  like,  with 
[  10  ]• 


The  Amour etta  Landscape 

dusky  flesh-tints  after  Gauguin,  and  with  an  im- 
pudent gown  patterned  and  colored  like  that  in 
Matisse's  once  celebrated  "Madras  Rouge."  But 
the  pearls  with  which  the  minx  was  crowned  and 
girdled,  draped  and  festooned,  —  ah,  the  pearls 
were  surely  a  fling  at  Maurice  Price  himself, 
"the  Price-of-Great-Pearls,"  as  the  League 
students  called  him,  just  as  in  other  days  they 
had  called  Kenyon  Cox,  "Bunion  Socks,"  George 
de  Forest  Brush,  "  Young-Man- Afraid-of-his- 
Brushes,"  and  Augustus  Saint-Gaudens,  "Gaudy 
Saint  August";  youthful  pleasantries  which 
harmed  no  one,  least  of  all  the  artists  themselves. 
Once  again  Maurice  laughed  aloud  as  he  re- 
called how  earnestly  he  had  explained  to  his  stu- 
dents his  method  in  painting  pearls,  telling  them 
of  the  many  slow  and  careful  studies  he  had  made 
of  pearls  before  he  had  really  mastered  the  mys- 
tery of  pearls,  and  much  else,  after  the  manner  of 
enthusiastic  and  self-giving  teachers  the  world 
over.  In  general,  the  youngsters  had  listened 
and  profited;  otherwise,  they  would  have  been 
donkeys.  Also,  they  had  jeered  and  jested;  other- 
wise, Maurice  thought,  they  would  have  been 
prigs.  And  that  nickname,  "the  Price-of-Great- 
Pearls,"  had  clung  to  him,  in  a  heart-warming 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

way.  He  felt  that  if  his  students  had  given  him 
no  title  at  all,  he  would  have  suffered  some  vague 
loneliness  of  spirit  when  among  them. 

Astonishing  how  Pietro,  in  one  piece  of  brilliant 
painting,  had  succeeded  in  poking  fun  at  two 
Frenchmen  and  two  Americans!  Certainly, 
Anthony's  well-studied  devil-may-care  compo- 
sition showed  doubly  riotous  after  that  boy  had 
wreaked  his  genius  on  it;  and  the  pearls,  as 
Maurice  saw  with  a  twinge  of  gratification,  were 
exquisitely  painted,  if  you  considered  them  as 
giant  opalescent  lamps  filched  from  some  moon- 
lit fairyland,  and  not  as  gems  discreetly  adorning 
a  woman.  And  then  the  Gauguin  coloring,  the 
Matisse  arabesques!  As  a  final  flourish,  like  the 
"I  thank  you"  after  a  four-minute  speech,  Pietro 
had  signed  the  work  "the  Price-of-Great-Pearls." 
Maurice  found,  on  looking  for  that  signature, 
that  some  later  jester  had  obliterated  from  it  all 
but  the  one  word,  "Price."  Price,  indeed! 

Maurice's  smile  faded  away  into  mere  pen- 
siveness  as  he  recalled  both  Pietro  and  Amouretta. 
The  boy,  in  all  his  vivid  brightness  of  youth, 
had  died  suddenly  from  the  epidemic  in  which 
Maurice  himself  had  suffered,  while  Amouretta  — 

Her  real  name  was  not  Amouretta.   No  one's 

[    12    ] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

is.  She  was  just  Anna  McGowan,  golden  and 
rosy,  with  hair  and  complexion  that  would  have 
been  beyond  belief  if  she  had  not  insisted  on 
showing  every  artist  (and  more  especially  his 
wife)  just  how  far  her  hair  fell  below  her  knees 
and  just  how  it  grew  around  her  temples;  be- 
cause, as  she  said, -it  was  where  the  hah:  started 
and  where  it  left  off  that  all  that  nasty  peroxide 
business  gave  those  others  away,  poor  things! 
Also,  she  would  press  her  finger  on  her  cheek  and 
lips,  so  that  their  roses  would  vanish  and  return, 
as  if  an  electric  button  had  been  touched.  She 
loved  to  have  the  wives  see  that,  too.  There  was 
nothing  false  about  Amouretta.  From  her  golden 
topknot  to  her  pink  toes,  she  was  as  good  a  girl, 
all  in  all,  as  ever  hopped  high-heeled  from  a 
painter's  studio  to  a  picture-studio  (two  quite 
different  arenas),  in  the  effort  to  make  both  ends 
meet,  and  then  cross  over.  "  It 's  the  cross-over 
that  counts,"  Amouretta  used  to  say;  "there's 
where  the  joy  in  life  appears."  The  name  Amour- 
etta was  a  business  concession  to  the  picture  in- 
dustry and  to  the  small  vaudeville  shows  in  which 
she  worked  when  posing  was  slack. 

A  singularly  vivid  personality,  that  child;  her 
adventures,  like  her  hair  and  her  complexion, 
I  '3  1 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

sometimes  seemed  fabulous,  at  first  glance,  but 
always  gained  new  lustre  after  investigation. 
For  instance,  there  was  on  her  shoulder  a  tiny 
red  mark,  which  she  said  was  due  to  a  bite  she 
had  received  at  the  Kilkenny  Ball,  from  a  mad 
and  anonymous  devotee  of  beauty.  Could  any 
one  altogether  believe  that?  Nevertheless,  young 
Cavendish  (whom  she  had  never  known  or  even 
seen),  on  coming  to  himself  the  day  after,  had 
confessed  himself  publicly,  in  an  agony  of  shame. 
He  had  taken  a  bite  of  a  peach  in  passing;  he 
did  n't  know  why,  Lord  help  him;  and  from  that 
hour  he  was  nevermore  the  strayed  reveller  we 
once  had  known,  but  settled  down  into  blameless 
and  uninteresting  eclipse.  Then  again,  there 
came  a  morning  when  Amouretta,  posing  in  a 
green  satin  bodice  as  an  understudy  for  an  over- 
worked "bud,"  whose  portrait  Maurice  Price 
was  painting,  had  yielded  to  that  self-revealing 
mood  to  which  all  models  are  at  times  given;  she 
confided  to  our  painter  that  she  was  engaged  to 
be  married  to  a  middle-aged  admirer,  a  man  of 
great  wealth,  whose  name  she  would  not  tell  until 
the  engagement  was  publicly  announced.  Could 
not  Mr.  Price  guess?  She  meant  to  give  up  both 
stage  and  model-stand,  of  course;  why,  she  had 
[  14] 


Tie  Amouretta  Landscape 

given  up  cigarettes  already  for  that  man,  be- 
cause he  had  said  that  the  men  of  his  family 
did  n't  like  them  for  ladies.  "And  he  was  so  dear, 
when  he  said  it." 

Amouretta's  brilliant  blush  came  and  went  so 
often  during  her  story,  and  finally  stayed  so  long, 
that  it  played  the  very  deuce  with  Maurice's 
entire  morning;  you  know  how  difficult  it  is  to 
paint  emerald  satin  when  the  wearer  is  blushing; 
the  green  and  the  red  come  to  blows.  And 
Maurice,  who  had  two  daughters  of  his  own, 
howbeit  small,  was  really  worried,  until  one 
afternoon  at  the  Century,  Mr.  William  Salton- 
stall,  long  of  limb,  lineage,  and  purse,  —  a  man 
of  undoubted  probity,  and  a  collector,  too!  — 
had  touched  him  on  the  shoulder,  and  poured  out 
the  whole  story  of  his  love  for  Amouretta.  The 
wedding  was  to  be  at  Saint  Barnaby's,  in  June. 
There  could  be  no  doubt  as  to  Mr.  SaltonstalTs 
self-surrender;  love  at  first  sight  it  was,  that  day 
in  the  studio  when  Maurice  had  introduced  a 
patron  of  beauty  to  beauty  herself.  Naturally 
the  painter  was  delighted  with  this  idyl  —  its 
delicate  fragrance,  its  perfect  flowering;  all  un- 
consciously, he  himself  had  sown  the  seed,  his 
wife  and  Amouretta  smiling  wisely  thereafter 
[  15] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

at  his  blindness.  He  had  always  liked  William 
Saltonstall,  and  none  the  less  because  that 
gentleman  was  not  one  whom  every  one  called 

Bill. 

After  the  engagement,  Amouretta  continued 
to  work,  because,  valiant  little  soul,  she  meant 
to  earn  her  own  trousseau.  No  man  not  a  relative 
should  be  able  to  say  he  had  done  that  for  her; 
and  I'm  thinking  it  would  be  a  long  day  before 
either  her  father  or  her  brother,  in  their  good- 
natured  shiftlessness,  could  provide  the  outfit 
she  had  in  mind!  But  there  was  no  June  wedding 
at  Saint  Barnaby's,  after  all;  for  Amouretta 
caught  a  fatal  chill  one  raw  night  at  the  Revelries, 
while  posing  as  Innocence,  insufficiently  clad  in 
white  paint  and  a  scrap  of  georgette,  in  one  of 
those  pure-white  sculpture  groups  which  occa- 
sionally reappear  in  refined  vaudeville. 

And  there  was  nothing  more  that  could  ever 
happen  now  to  Pietro  and  Amouretta,  thought 
Maurice.  For  one  as  for  the  other,  their  story 
of  bright  youth  was  ended.  For  Pietro,  no 
daring  assault  upon  the  Roman  Prize;  for  Amour- 
etta, no  adventure  of  any  color  at  all,  not  even 
that  climax  of  white  satin  train  and  flower-girls 
at  Saint  Barnaby's.  Maurice  sighed  as  he  took 
[  16] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

up  a  large  flat  brush  and  charged  it  with  gray 
paint  to  obliterate  the  caricature.  A  few  vig- 
orous strokes  would  suffice.  But  he  could  not 
bring  himself  to  do  what  he  intended.  He  started 
back  as  if  he  had  hurt  himself.  Or  had  young 
hands  pushed  him  back?  Surely  there  was  some- 
thing hi  that  quaint,  brilliant,  impudent  creature 
smiling  on  him  —  some  hint  or  vestige  of  that 
which  was  once  Amouretta  —  Amouretta  who 
threw  a  kiss  to  the  world,  and  was  gone.  And 
what  was  he,  successful  Maurice  Price,  that  he 
should  go  about  with  brutal  paint  to  hush  up 
forever  young  Pietro's  jest?  No,  no,  he  could 
not  do  that.  It  was  not  fair,  not  sportsmanlike. 
Live  and  let  live ! 

He  examined  all  the  other  panels,  but  their 
shapes  and  sizes  were  not  right.  "Oh,  well,  I 
don't  give  a  damn,"  lied  Maurice  to  himself. 
He  lit  a  cigarette,  but  the  landscape  came  be- 
tween him  and  his  smoke.  He  picked  up  a 
frayed  copy  of  "La  Reine  Margot,"  but  the  land- 
scape shut  out  Saint  Bartholomew.  He  sat  a 
moment  in  Anthony's  Venetian  chair,  and 
covered  his  eyes  with  his  hands,  but  between  his 
eyes  and  his  hands  he  saw  only  the  miracle  land- 
scape. So  he  rose  resolutely,  took  up  the  panel 


Tie  Amouretia  Landscape 

of  his  choice,  the  Amouretta  panel,  and  began  to 
paint  on  its  untouched  side.  A  beautifully  primed 
surface  lent  itself  at  once  to  the  artist's  will. 

II 

"!N  the  midst  of  death  we  are  in  life,"  he  mur- 
mured. Below,  in  the  orchard,  his  wife  was 
carolling  old  French  songs  with  the  children. 
"On  y  danse,  on  y  danse!"  Even  Maury  junior, 
a  boy  to  the  backbone,  and  little  given  to  self- 
expression  in  song,  especially  foreign-language 
song,  boomed  out  a  mighty  "Tout  en  ronde!" 
Half  an  hour  before,  Maurice  senior  had  stood 
hand-in-hand  with  his  wife,  looking  up  into  the 
flowery  dome  of  a  magnificent  pear  tree,  all 
aglow  with  golden-white  blossoms,  all  perfumed 
with  their  incense,  and  musical  with  legions  of 
bees.  He  knew  just  where  to  find  those  magic 
boughs  in  his  landscape;  he  recognized  their 
golden-veiled  whiteness,  their  garance  rose.  Left 
and  right  the  spendthrift  river  was  pouring  out 
its  silver  in  a  royal  progress,  mile  after  mile  in 
the  May  sunlight.  Ascutney,  the  great  mountain 
that  all  the  people  thereabouts  knew  as  their 
tutelary  deity,  had  chosen  from  his  myriad 
mantles  the  one  he  might  wear  for  an  hour  or  so, 
[  18] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

of  an  entrancing  blue  to  mock  the  heavens  them- 
selves. Smilingly  yet  warningly  he  confronted 
Maurice,  singling  him  out  from  other  persons, 
to  tell  him  in  a  secret,  consoling  way,  of  the  gen- 
erations of  men,  those  who  had  gone  and  those 
who  were  yet  to  come;  yes,  Ascutney  spoke  very 
seriously  with  Maurice,  reminding  him  of  every- 
thing, whatever  it  might  be,  that  he,  Maurice 
Price,  in  his  great  good  fortune  in  art  and  life, 
owed  to  those  generations,  and  must  joyfully 
repay,  by  painting  as  best  he  might  that  lyric 
scene. 

"  Generation  after  generation,"  thought  Mau- 
rice, "but  no  longer  Pietro  or  little  Amouretta." 
Quivering  with  emotion  as  he  was,  he  saw  that 
the  passion  and  skill  of  that  far-away  Maurice 
of  the  twenties  had  not  vanished.  Now,  as  then, 
he  had  in  large  measure  the  artist's  gift  of  mul- 
tiplying his  personality  when  he  was  at  work;  his 
consciousness  as  an  artist  rose  many-mansioned 
toward  the  skies.  With  heart  and  mind  swelling 
from  the  scene  he  conned  and  created,  he  was  at 
once  the  Maurice  who  did  not  need  a  pearl 
palette  to  capture  the  glory  of  that  violet-edged 
puff  of  golden  cloud  over  the  meadow,  who  could 
hear  the  bees  in  the  orchard,  who  could  see  a 
[  19] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

jewelled  indigo  bird  flaming  out  from  the  locust 
bush;  a  Maurice  whose  whole  being  overflowed 
with  returning  health,  with  rapture  in  painting, 
with  pride  in  Maury  junior,  with  love  for  the  wife 
of  his  delight,  with  affection  for  good  old  Jimmy 
Anthony,  and  yet  a  Maurice  with  sharp  remem- 
brance of  those  vanished  children  of  joy,  Pietro 
and  Amouretta. 

As  he  painted,  he  smiled  often,  because  many 
persons,  both  living  and  dead,  came  and  ranged 
themselves  beside  him,  and  it  was  pleasant  to  be 
talking  with  them,  on  that  flowery  hillside.  Oh, 
Lionardo,  of  course,  and  Pere  Corot;  Monet  and 
Pissarro;  his  own  namesake,  Maurice  Denis, 
dear  Thayer  of  Monadnock,  and  John  Sargent, 
since  he  too  could  do  landscapes  and  portraits 
and  murals!  And  Whistler,  certainly,  though  at 
times  he  talked  too  much,  interrupting  quite 
scornfully  while  Maurice  was  explaining  to 
Lionardo  how  our  American  goldfinch  beats  his 
wings  as  he  sings;  or  else  breaking  in  with  a 
prickly  jest  when  Maurice  was  giving  M.  Monet 
his  reasons  why  (with  due  respect,  Monsieur!) 
he  meant  to  paint  all  day  on  that  one  landscape, 
instead  of  beginning  another  as  soon  as  the  light 
should  change. 

[20] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

Some  of  his  younger  friends  came  also.  One 
would  have  said  that  half  the  American  Camou- 
flage trooped  in;  little  Robert,  so  strangely  saved 
that  black  night  at  Beaumetz-les-Cambrai; 
young  Harry,  born  at  the  foot  of  Ascutney  — 
smiling  Harry  the  sculptor,  beside  whom  he  him- 
self had  stood  unharmed,  in  the  field  by  Reims, 
when  a  shell  came,  striking  Harry  to  nothingness; 
and  Anthony's  nephew  too,  that  portrait-painter 
whom  the  papers  had  called  brilliant-futured 
• —  debonair  Charlie  Anthony  whom  he  himself, 
merely  Captain  Price,  under  orders,  had  un- 
knowingly despatched  to  his  doom.  Maurice 
was  used  to  that  boy's  presence  by  now;  the 
harsh  realities  of  dreams  had  often  brought  them 
together.  Such  things  could  not  be,  and  men 
remain  dumb.  All  this  and  much  more  must  be 
told  in  the  miracle  landscape  he  was  creating; 
it  would  be  dishonest,  otherwise.  In  spirit,  smil- 
ing Harry  and  his  mates  belonged  to  that  scene. 
Even  M.  Monet  admitted  that  without  doubt 
there  is  also  this  point  of  view.  Not  one  of  those 
companions  failed  to  understand  why  our  painter 
had  not  blotted  out  Pietro's  Amouretta.  Not  one 
of  them  was  surprised  when  all  of  a  sudden  he 
looked  up  from  his  own  painting,  to  make  sure 

[21    ] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

that  Pietro's  was  right  side  up,  and  uninjured  by 
contact  with  the  easel;  Maurice  laughing  to  himself 
the  while,  and  saying  aloud,  "I  should  worry!" 
The  critics  declared  later  that  this  canvas  was 
Price's  masterpiece.  They  wrote  of  the  monu- 
mental purple  dignity  of  his  mountain,  the  self- 
contained  inwardness  of  his  middle  distance,  the 
happy  audacity  of  his  flowery  foreground.  They 
might  have  found  out,  to  be  sure,  just  by  looking, 
that  the  painting  was  on  wood,  not  canvas!  But 
they  could  not  know  how  much  of  Reims  and 
Beaumetz-les-Cambrai  were  playing  hide-and- 
seek  among  the  shadows  of  Maurice's  mind  when 
he  set  down  Ascutney  in  the  mantle  of  the  hour. 
They  would  have  been  startled  out  of  a  day's 
omniscience  had  they  been  aware  of  everything 
that  Pietro  and  Amouretta  had  contributed  of 
their  brave  young  substance  to  that  smiling  fore- 
ground. So  excuse  them,  please,  for  whatever  was 
wrong  in  their  writings;  they  could  not  know, 
exactly,  about  Maurice;  and  after  all,  they  made 
a  very  good  guess. 

Ill 

THAT  summer,   Maurice    painted  many  other 
landscapes.   There  were  falls,  brooks,  and  rocks 

[22   ] 


The  Amonretta  Landscape 

in  that  glamorous  country,  and  these  he  showed 
in  their  beauty  as  he  saw  it.  There  was  also  an 
enchanted  road  under  enchanted  pines,  where 
he  once  beheld  Paolo  and  Francesca  walking  at 
twilight;  this  too  became  matter  of  record,  to  be 
taken  up  later  and  played  with  for  heart's  delight. 
Rumors  of  his  latest  work  reached  the  art  gal- 
leries. New  Yorkers  know  those  galleries,  dot- 
ting the  Avenue  from  the  Library  to  the  Plaza, 
and  even  blossoming  out  into  side  streets  of  lower 
rental.  And  the  merry  war  between  artist  and 
dealer,  as  eternal  and  various  (and  perhaps  as 
little  reasonable)  as  the  war  between  the  sexes, 
would  be  taken  up  with  renewed  vigor  in  the 
autumn.  Price  had  received  letters  from  the 
Abingdon,  the  Buckminster,  the  Clarendon; 
from  As  You  Like  It,  even,  as  well  as  from  Far- 
intosh  and  from  MacDuff.  The  letters  were 
similar  in  content;  their  writers  had  heard  of  his 
landscapes  —  a  new  line  for  him,  was  it  not? 
The  buying  public  would  be  interested,  of  course, 
and  would  he  care  to  exhibit  in  their  well-ap- 
pointed galleries?  They  would  be  glad  to  hear 
from  him  at  his  early  convenience.  Price  smiled, 
and  answered,  declining. 
In  fact,  he  was  interested,  not  financially  but 
[  23  ] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

sympathetically,  in  a  gallery  from  which  he  had 
received  no  letters;  —  an  out-of-the-way  little 
gallery,  a  modest  ground-floor-and-mezzanine 
affair  slowly  becoming  better  known  and  liked 
as  the  Court  of  New  Departures.  He  was  in- 
terested because  this  fantastically  named  refuge 
for  originality  in  art  was  a  business  venture 
(a  venture  that  must  be  made  to  succeed !)  under- 
taken by  Hal  Wrayne,  a  madcap  young  cousin. 
Hal  Wrayne's  father  had  always  kept  this  only 
son  of  his  well-supplied  with  means  for  cutting 
up  harmless  capers,  at  school  and  in  college;  and 
Hal  himself,  both  by  nature  and  by  training  the 
perfect  comedian  in  life,  had  hardly  stopped  to 
ask  where  he  was  going,  all  so  joyous,  until,  on 
his  father's  sudden  death,  he  found  himself  al- 
most penniless,  with  a  wife  and  baby  daughter 
to  support,  and  with  a  mother  and  sister  who 
needed  his  help. 

But  Hal  did  not  wholly  forswear  the  Comic 
Spirit  even  when  he  surveyed  the  clouds  on  his 
horizon.  The  War  had  cut  short  his  last  year 
at  law  school,  but  he  knew  enough  to  know  that 
in  his  young  hands  the  law  would  be  but  a  sorry 
staff  of  life  for  five  persons,  four  of  them  in  petti- 
coats. He  had  studied  art,  too,  having  been  very 
[  24  ] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

fond  of  Cousin  Maurice,  who  had  let  him  play 
about  in  the  studio,  one  summer;  indeed,  being 
clever  and  versatile,  Hal  had  painted,  under  Mau- 
rice's criticism,  a  series  of  gay-garlanded  borders 
to  temper  the  austerity  of  certain  court-house  deco- 
rations, and  so  had  once  really  earned  money  as  a 
painter's  assistant.  But  a  month  among  murals 
does  not  constitute  a  career,  Hal  Wrayne  saw.  Art 
was  even  less  likely  than  law  to  provide,  all  at 
once,  for  his  "little  quartette  of  skirts,"  as  he 
cheerily  called  his  dependents,  who  varied  in  age 
from  five  months  to  fifty-five  years.  What  to 
do?  It  suddenly  occurred  to  Hal  that  he  might 
strike  a  happy  medium  by  running  an  art  gal- 
lery. 

"Art  galleries  nowadays,"  said  young  Hal, 
"have  got  to  have  a  punch  to  'em.  At  least,  the 
new  ones  have.  You  know  —  element  of  surprise, 
variety  the  spice  of  life,  the  dernier  cri  sort  of 
thing.  What  little  I  know  about  law  will  show 
me  how  far  I  can  go,  without  being  arrested  for 
speeding;  and  what  little  I  know  about  art,  if  I 
spread  it  out  thin  enough,  ought  to  carry  me 
along  quite  a  ways." 

Maurice  Price  shook  his  head.  Frankly,  he 
saw  nothing  in  it  at  all,  for  Hal  and  his  quartette. 
[25  ] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

Nevertheless,  Hal  looked  about  manfully,  head 
up,  early  and  late.  He  found  an  old  stable  with 
a  loft,  in  the  East  Fifties,  and  vigorously  re- 
modelled the  building  into  a  court  with  tiny  up- 
stairs galleries,  decorating  court,  staircase,  and 
rooms  in  a  somewhat  slapdash  style,  with  results 
that  were  reminiscent  both  of  his  own  room  at 
college  and  his  cousin's  studio.  As  a  nucleus  for 
his  first  show,  he  had  several  enigmatic  Lithu- 
anian sketches,  painted  with  that  fierce  peasant 
coloring  which  attracts  jaded  civilizations.  There 
were  also  some  rather  unusual  unpublished  post- 
ers by  a  needy  French  friend  of  Hal's;  and  by 
great  good  luck,  he  had  obtained  a  whole  se- 
quence of  Harriet  Higsbee's  famous  landscape 
compositions  in  cut-up  linoleum.  (You  remem- 
ber Harriet  in  Paris?  How  she  never  washed  a 
paint-brush,  or  anything?)  Between  the  posters, 
the  Lithuanian  things  and  the  linoleum,  the  Court 
of  New  Departures  was  modestly  beginning  to 
keep  its  promises,  even  before  Hal,  in  a  burst  of 
inspiration,  had  arranged  upon  the  staircase  his 
own  private  collection  of  humorous  sculptures 
in  the  baser  metals,  among  them  a  certain  ironic 
green  elephant  warranted  to  make  the  saddest 
mortal  smile  again. 

[26  J 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

"You  see,"  he  explained  to  the  bewildered 
Maurice,  "  I  want  the  tone  of  this  dive  to  be  at 
once  romantic,  realistic,  humorous,  and  ironic. 
I  guess  I've  captured  it  all,  now."  Maurice 
sighed  as  he  helped  his  cousin  to  hang  a  pair 
of  fine  tapestries,  begged  from  Hal's  trusting 
mother.  "  To  draw  the  dowagers,"  Hal  said. 

Odd  as  it  seemed  to  the  elder  man,  the  dow- 
agers were  really  drawn.  After  all,  you  never 
can  tell;  dowagers  are  not  exempt.  Through  a 
judicious  one-by-one  exposition  (a  Japanese  idea, 
borrowed  by  Hal  from  The  Book  of  Tea),  many 
valuable  objects  salvaged  from  the  wreck  of  the 
Wrayne  fortunes  were  disposed  of  at  excellent 
prices;  and  before  the  year  was  out,  the  boy  had 
succeeded  in  selling  to  his  college  friends,  and 
their  friends,  a  goodly  number  of  little  pictures, 
studies  and  sketches,  mostly  in  the  new  manner, 
whatever  that  happened  to  be.  His  "quartette 
of  skirts,"  far  from  being  an  encumbrance,  were, 
so  he  stoutly  declared,  "a  high-class  asset."  His 
sister  Dodo  was  a  wonder  in  throwing  a  bit  of 
bargain-counter  drapery  over  a  mission  stool,  so 
as  to  make  you  think  of  a  Doge's  palace.  She  and 
his  wife  organized  those  charming  teas,  which, 
when  presided  over  by  his  lady-motber,  with  her 
[271 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

authentic  air  of  belle  Marquise,  made  everything 
look  thoroughly  salable  and  artistic,  from  those 
queer  Lithuanian  sketches  to  Hal's  own  models 
for  stage  sets.  Prosperity  was  just  around  the 
corner;  and  the  only  singular  circumstance  was, 
Hal  began  to  have  ideals.  "No  junk,  girlie,"  he 
would  warn  the  enterprising  Dodo.  "No  Green- 
wich Village  in  mine !  I  mean  to  run  a  gallery  fit 
for  a  refined  limousine  trade,  and  I  don't  want 
my  clients  to  think  they're  slumming,  just  be- 
cause I  keep  'em  in  touch  with  the  grand  new 
movements  in  art." 

Maurice  Price  looked  on,  fascinated  by  the 
spectacle  of  his  young  relative's  start  in  a  career 
that  was  neither  law  nor  art,  yet  had  been  sug- 
gested to  Hal  by  his  slender  knowledge  of  both. 

"Why  don't  you  send  me  up  some  of  your 
things?"  the  boy  boldly  asked  Maurice.  "They 
would  sell  like  hot  cakes,  mixed  in  with  my  reg- 
ular stuff." 

And  Maurice,  full  of  good-will,  had  replied, 
"Perhaps  I  may,  if  I  can  look  up  some  inexpen- 
sive little  bits  your  customers  might  like." 

"Not  on  your  tintype!"  retorted  Hal.  "Can't 
you  see,  old  Price-of-Great-Pearls,  my  quartette 
and  I  have  to  live  on  my  thirty  per  cent?  7  don't 
I  28  ]  ' 


The  Amoi4.retta  Landscape 

want  your  inexpensive  little  bits!  I  want  your 
masterpieces,  the  costlier  the  better.  Bet  I  can 
sell  'em  for  you,  too,  as  easy  as  Farintosh,  or 
MacDuff.  Your  being  an  Academician  does  n't 
stand  in  my  way!" 

Maurice  flushed,  not  so  much  on  account  of 
being  an  Academician,  as  because  he  suddenly 
saw  himself  self-convicted  of  a  lack  of  imagination 
in  regard  to  his  cousin. 

"  Say,  Maury,  think  it  over!  What  do  you  take 
me  for,  anyway?  Do  you  suppose  I  want  to  carry 
on  a  queer  joint  like  this,  always?  It  is  n't 
merely  my  commission  I 'm  thinking  of  when  I'm 
asking  you  for  your  best  stuff!  My  littlest  skirt 
will  be  growing  up,  and  there'll  be  others,  per- 
haps. Pants,  too,  —  who  knows?  I  would  n't 
like  to  have  him,  and  them,  see  me  spend  my 
days  in  a  frisky,  risky  side-show  like  this!"  His 
gesture  included  the  emerald-green  elephant,  as 
yet  unbought,  and  beginning  to  flake  off  a  little 
at  the  tip  of  the  trunk.  "I  like  this  art  business 
—  I  like  it  fine.  But  I  want  to  carry  it  on  in  a 
way  a  fellow  like  you  would  approve  of,  and  re- 
spect, and  be  enthusiastic  about!" 

"Do  you  know,"  answered  Maurice,  reflec- 
tively, "I  begin  to  think  that's  just  what  you 
[29] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

are  doing,  as  fast  as  you  can!"  He  spilled  some 
cigar-ash  on  the  rug,  and  ground  it  in  carefully 
with  his  foot,  always  a  sign  of  emotion  in  Price- 
of-Great-Pearls.  And  the  two  had  parted,  well 
pleased  with  each  other  and  with  themselves. 

Hence  it  was  that  Maurice,  in  reviewing  the 
work  of  that  good  summer,  had  decided,  Aca- 
demician though  he  was,  to  send  to  the  Court  of 
New  Departures  his  best-loved  landscape.  Far- 
intosh  was  to  have  the  rest.  They  were  all  of  them 
good  stuff,  too;  he  knew  that.  But  not  one  of 
them,  either  for  his  artist  friends  or  for  himself, 
surpassed  in  charm  and  amplitude  that  southern 
picture  of  Ascutney,  painted  with  Anthony's 
materials,  too.  At  first  blush,  it  seemed  a  high- 
keyed,  ecstatic  picture,  but  a  second  glance  re- 
vealed a  multitude  of  lovely,  lively  grays;  dew- 
spangled  or  tear-touched,  who  could  say? 
Maurice  knew  that  he  had  never  before  put  so 
much  of  himself  into  any  picture.  It  was  dyed- 
in-the-wool  Price,  by  Jove  it  was!  He  told  him- 
self so,  in  a  passion  of  certainty.  He  knew,  he 
knew,  that  beyond  anything  he  had  ever  before 
painted,  it  showed  him  at  his  best,  intellectually 
and  emotionally;  it  revealed  the  man,  and  what- 
ever mastery  he  had  over  his  life  and  times;  and 
[  30] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

incidentally,  his  technique,  too,  a  thing  not  to  be 
despised  in  the  midst  of  larger  considerations. 
Yes,  the  pearl  among  his  pictures!  He  smiled, 
remembering  his  nickname. 

And  the  jewel  had  a  suitable  setting.  To  his 
joy,  he  had  discovered  among  the  hills  an  old 
Frenchman,  cultivating  his  garden  —  a  frame- 
maker  who  had  long  been  with  Chartier.  Think 
of  it,  a  man  who  not  only  could  carve  to  per- 
fection the  delicately  reserved  mouldings  Maurice 
Price  desired,  but  who  also  really  knew  how  to 
gild,  in  the  reliable  old  manner!  Such  finds  as 
these  make  life  worth  living.  The  Frenchman's 
frame  was  a  masterpiece,  Maurice  declared.  He 
sent  it,  in  advance,  to  the  Court  of  New  De- 
partures; he  felt  that  it  might  have  an  elevating 
influence  there.  But  he  kept  the  landscape  by 
him,  for  pure  joy  in  its  presence,  until  the  last 
moment.  Sometimes,  when  he  put  it  away  at 
night,  out  of  the  reach  of  thieves  and  other  in- 
sects, he  looked  at  Amouretta,  on  the  back  of  the 
panel,  and  wondered.  But  he  had  no  wish  to  blot 
out  that  strange  likeness.  It  was  part  and  parcel 
—  there  was  something  about  it,  too  —  He  left 
it  there,  just  as  Pietro  of  the  merry  heart  had 
left  it,  until  a  later  jester  had  wreaked  himself 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

upon  the  signature,  sparing  only  the  name  Price. 

In  the  Court  of  New  Departures,  Hal  Wrayne 
was  expecting  that  picture.  Maurice  had  lacon- 
ically written  of  his  fresh  adventures  in  painting, 
that  summer;  he  had  added  that  what  he  was 
about  to  send  was  "the  gem  of  the  whole  outfit." 
All  of  his  new  pictures  were  new  departures,  ac- 
cording to  Maurice.  However,  he  honestly  be- 
lieved that  this  one,  the  gem!  had  in  its  inspira- 
tion something  at  once  deeper  and  fresher  than 
the  others  could  boast.  No  need  to  mention  that 
fact  to  Farintosh,  of  course;  for  he  had  decided 
to  let  Farintosh  exhibit  all  but  the  gem.  Thus 
Maurice,  half  in  jest  and  all  in  earnest.  Hal  was 
jubilant.  He  did  not  know  whether  the  gem  was 
a  portrait,  or  a  fragment  of  a  decoration.  What 
did  that  matter?  A  gem  is  a  gem.  When  the 
frame  arrived,  he  recognized  its  beauty,  and 
danced  for  joy.  He  commissioned  Dodo  to  keep 
her  weather  eye  out  for  a  harmonizing  remnant. 

At  that  time,  he  had  in  his  employ  a  long  lean 
German,  straight  as  a  die,  body  and  soul;  a  man 
whose  services  were  really  worth  more  than  Hal 
could  afford  to  pay,  but  who  nevertheless  had 
begged  to  remain,  because  he  was  happy  in  the 
Court  of  New  Departures,  and  had  been  un- 
[  32] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

happy  elsewhere.  He  called  himself  the  famulus, 
and  had  made  himself  well  liked  as  such.  Hal 
decided  that  when  the  pearl  among  pictures 
should  at  last  arrive,  the  famulus,  who  was  per- 
fect in  such  duties,  should  unpack  it,  set  it  into 
its  frame,  and  hang  it  in  the  place  of  honor,  so 
that  he  himself  might  view  it  unexpectedly,  from 
across  the  room.  He  carefully  explained  to  the 
famulus  that  this  picture,  coming  down  from  the 
mountains,  was  a  new  departure  by  a  very  great 
artist,  and  that  he  himself  wanted  to  see  it  just 
as  a  buyer  might  see  it;  with  a  fresh  eye,  don't 
you  know?  Just  for  the  big  impression,  so  to 
speak,  and  to  avoid  letting  his  mind  get  confused 
by  a  lot  of  little  impressions,  as  would  surely 
happen  if  he  took  it  out  of  the  box  himself,  and 
fussed  around  with  the  hanging.  There  was 
something  of  the  boy  and  the  comedian  still  left 
in  Hal,  you  observe.  The  famulus,  who  had  seen 
and  heard  strange  things  in  art  and  from  men, 
both  here  and  abroad,  nodded  sagely.  He  under- 
stood. 

Even  so,  after  he  had  unpacked  the  panel,  he 

scarcely  knew  which  of  the  two  sides  it  were  best 

to  show,  in  that  frame  whose  workmanship  he 

had  already  lovingly  examined.    In  his  honest 

[33  ] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

conceit,  he  did  not  wish  to  seek  counsel  from  his 
employer.  To  him,  the  landscape  looked  more 
beautiful  than  the  lady!  On  the  other  hand, 
Mr.  Wrayne  had  spoken  of  the  great  artist's 
work  as  a  new  departure;  surely  the  lady,  rather 
than  the  landscape,  fitted  that  specification! 
Ach,  it  was  a  turvy-tipsy  world,  these  days.  No 
one  knew  what  was  beauty,  any  more.  Turning 
the  lady's  bright  image  this  way  and  that,  he 
noted  a  signature,  Price.  Yes,  that  settled  it; 
Price  was  the  name  Mr.  Wrayne  had  spoken, 
many  times  already.  With  a  sigh  for  the  passing 
of  the  old  regime  in  art  as  in  life,  the  German 
famulus  fitted  the  Italian  boy's  "fake"  study  of 
the  Irish  girl  within  the  Frenchman's  faultless 
frame,  and  set  the  picture  in  the  place  of  honor, 
for  rich  Americans  to  see. 

Not  even  to  his  "quartette  of  skirts"  has  Hal 
Wrayne  ever  disclosed  his  real  feelings  on  seating 
himself  in  the  buyer's  seat,  to  take  in  suddenly, 
"in  one  big  impression,"  the  effect  of  Maurice's 
new  departure.  He  himself  did  not  know  what 
his  real  feelings  were.  He  had  once  had  some 
little  taste,  he  told  himself,  some  little  training; 
but  these  had  been  set  at  naught  by  certain  of 
his  recent  exploits  in  salesmanship.  More  than 
[  34] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

once,  of  late,  he  had  experienced  the  acute  dis- 
tress of  a  frank  soul  that  does  not  know  whether 
it  is  lying  or  not. 

"That's  what  a  joint  like  this  brings  a  man  to," 
mused  Hal.  "First,  intellectual  dishonesty,  in 
other  words,  blinking;  and  next,  total  blindness 
of  the  mind's  eye."  Amouretta's  lively  blue 
glance  dismayed  him.  Was  that  girl  with  pearls 
really  a  Price  —  a  Price  of  deeper  and  fresher 
inspiration  than  was  to  be  discerned  in  those 
Prices  the  great  Farintosh  was  soon  to  show,  on 
the  Avenue?  He  could  not  believe  his  eyes.  Yet 
there  was  the  signature.  It  did  not  look  like 
Maurice's  usual  signature;  but  then,  there  was 
nothing  like  Maurice,  in  the  whole  thing.  A  new 
departure  indeed!  Hal's  spirit  quailed. 

"They  always  said  Maurice  Price  could  paint 
anything,  in  any  way;  but  this  stumps  me.  And 
it  sure  does  give  me  a  pain  all  over  when  I  try  to 
like  it.  Perhaps  there's  something  in  one  of  those 
eyes  that  gets  me,  somehow.  Is  there,  or  is  n't 
there?  If  there  is,  hanged  if  I  know  whether  it's 
the  near  eye  or  the  off  eye!"  Still  playing  the 
part  of  a  buyer,  Hal  writhed  in  the  buyer's  seat, 
a  spurious  Renaissance  antique  discarded  by 
Maurice. 

[35  1 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

Hal  was  always  immaculately  dressed.  Through 
thick  and  thin,  he  had  kept  his  air  of  purple  and 
fine  linen  about  him.  Never  a  morning  without 
a  white  flower  in  his  buttonhole;  and  day  after 
day,  his  eternally  crumpled  bright  blond  hair 
was  all  that  saved  him  from  the  dandiacal.  But 
now!  You  would  have  been  sorry  for  him  had 
you  found  him  humped  in  his  counterfeit  throne, 
his  cigarette  awry  on  his  lip,  and  his  carnation 
lying  all  forlorn  on  the  parquet.  Had  fate  allowed 
him  but  ten  seconds  more,  he  would  have  set 
himself  right.  Too  late!  Mr.  William  Saltonstall 
had  just  entered  the  gallery.  The  ruler  of  the 
Court  of  New  Departures  had  hard  work  to  pull 
himself  together,  and  recapture  his  pleasant 
alertness.  It  must  be  done,  however;  Mr.  Salton- 
stall was  too  good  a  client  to  lose.  Hal  sprang  to 
his  feet,  kicked  the  carnation  under  the  throne, 
and  with  it  cast  aside  for  the  moment  his  prob- 
lem of  the  true  and  the  false  in  art,  as  if  it  were  an 
entangling  garment  that  would  burden  him  in 
a  race. . . . 

IV 

THE  next  day,  Maurice  Price,  packing  up  his 

belongings  to  return  to  the  city  in  time  for  the 

[  36] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

November  elections,  was  puzzled  by  a  telegram 
from  his  helter-skelter  cousin.  Just  what  could  it 
mean?  In  telegrams,  if  in  no  other  form  of  compo- 
sition, the  youth  resorted  to  punctuation;  he  felt 
that  periods  gave  clearness,  an  idea  he  had  picked 
up  while  doing  war  work  for  the  Government. 

Can  sell  picture  period 

Top  price  cash  down  period 

On  condition  immediate  withdrawal 

from  gallery  period 
Buyer  buyer  waits  your  wire  period 

WRAYNE 

As  Maurice  motored  down  to  the  station,  the 
maple  and  beech  leaves  spurned  by  his  tires  rose 
up  in  their  passing  glory  and  sang  Hal's  message, 
over  and  over,  with  variations;  and  on  the  night 
train,  the  wheels  took  up  the  refrain,  with  grind- 
ing insistence.  "Buyer  buyer  waits  your  wire," 
though  probably  due  in  part  to  a  mistake  at  the 
office,  sounded  a  little  like  the  new  poetry; 
Maurice  hoped  there  might  be  truth  as  well  as 
poetry  in  it.  "Top  price  cash  down"  had  its  own 
music,  of  course;  but  "immediate  withdrawal 
from  gallery"  was  less  pleasing  to  the  ear.  It  had 
implications.  That  part  of  the  message,  reverber- 
ated in  the  too  sonorous  breathing  of  lower  nine, 
[371 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

just  opposite,  really  annoyed  our  painter.  As  he 
afterward  told  Hal,  adapting  his  language  to  his 
hearer,  "it  got  his  goat."  "Immediate  with- 
drawal," indeed!  Such  words  were  not  to  be  ad- 
dressed to  a  Price. 

Emerging  from  the  sordid  practicalities  of  the 
Pullman,  he  sought  his  Club  for  breakfast;  he 
felt  that  the  morning  air  on  his  face,  even  in  the 
few  steps  from  the  Grand  Central  to  the  Century, 
might  supplement  the  sketchy  passes  he  had 
made  before  the  shiny  Pullman  basin,  while 
lower  nine,  perspiring  in  purple  pajamas,  awaited 
his  turn;  lower  nine,  in  waking  as  in  sleeping 
hours,  still  suggesting  "immediate  withdrawal." 
The  offending  phrase  followed  Maurice  into  the 
breakfast-room.  He  had  eaten  it  in  his  grape- 
fruit and  was  thoughtfully  stirring  it  into  his 
coffee,  when  Mr.  William  Saltonstall,  that  early 
bird  among  collectors,  sauntered  in,  and  after 
a  moment's  hesitation,  hastened  to  grasp  his 
hand. 

Maurice  in  his  absorption  did  not  associate  his 
enigmatic  "buyer  buyer"  with  Mr.  Saltonstall. 
Indeed,  that  gentleman  was  known  everywhere  as 
a  connoisseur  in  figure-pieces;  he  never  bought 
landscapes.  Yet  there  was  something  unusual 
[38] 


The  Amour etta  Landscape 

in  his  manner;  his  dark  melancholy  eyes,  usually 
very  gentle,  were  smouldering  with  a  kind  of 
suppressed  excitement,  in  which  both  joy  and 
pain  were  suggested. 

"Surely  I  have  the  right  explanation,  have  n't 
I?"  he  began,  with  anxious  courtesy. 

"  If  you  have,"  replied  Maurice,  "I  wish  you'd 
share  it  with  me,  along  with  breakfast." 

Acting  on  a  fantastic  impulse  to  match  an- 
other man's  perplexities  with  his  own,  he  pushed 
the  crumpled  telegram  across  the  table. 

Mr.  Saltonstall  smiled.  "Oh,  yes,  I  asked 
Wrayne  to  wire  you." 

A  glimmer  of  light  broke  over  Maurice.  "Are 
you  —  by  any  chance  —  this  'buyer  buyer'?" 

His  friend  nodded  nervously.  "Still  waiting 
your  wire!  But  I  don't  ask  immediate  with- 
drawal, now.  That  is,  if  the  truth  is  what  I  think 
it  is." 

"But  what  is  the  truth?"  cried  the  bewildered 
painter. 

"You  should  know,"  returned  the  other.  "I 
have  my  belief,  my  strong  belief!  —  but  you,  you 
have  the  knowledge!  For  God's  sake,  man,  was 
it  a  landscape  or  —  a  lady  —  that  you  sent  down 
to  that  cousin  of  yours?" 
[  39] 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

Maurice  could  see  that  Saltonstall  was  trem- 
bling with  emotion.  In  a  flash,  he  remembered 
Amouretta.  "Oh,"  he  cried  out,  in  a  shocked 
voice,  "a  landscape,  a  thousand  times  a  land- 
scape! Did  you  think  I  could  have  meant  the 
other,  the  one  on  the  back?  Amouretta?" 

Mr.  Saltonstall  looked  relieved,  triumphant, 
ashamed.  "Yes,  I  did,  at  first!  And  why  not, 
when  it  was  just  that  ribald  portrait,  and  nothing 
else,  that  Wrayne  showed  me  there,  in  an  ex- 
quisite frame,  in  his  confounded  Court  of  New 
Departures?  I  tell  you,  Maurice  Price,  I  was  wild 
when  I  saw  it.  In  my  heart  I  vowed  vengeance  on 
you  and  all  your  tribe.  I  could  n't  believe  it  of 
you  —  you,  of  all  men;  yet  there  it  was  before 
my  eyes.  I  couldn't  let  that  thing  stay  there! 
No  man,  who  felt  as  I  did  about  Amouretta, 
could  let  it  stay,  to  be  gaped  at  by  the  multitude 
looking  for  new  sensations  in  art,  and  to  be 
written  up  in  the  art  column  of  the  Sunday 
papers!  Oh,  I  admit,  of  course,  there  was  some- 
thing captivating  about  it,  too;  captivating  as 
well  as  desecrating,  yes.  Well,  I  made  Wrayne 
take  an  oath  to  put  it  away,  away,  out  of  the 
world's  sight,  and  send  you  a  wire." 

Maurice  of  the  compassionate  eyes  saw  the 
[40] 


The  Amouretla  Landscape 

drops  of  sweat  gather  on  Saltonstall's  lean 
temples. 

"You  must  know,"  said  the  artist  gently,  "it 
was  never  I  who  painted  that  portrait  of  Amou- 
retta.  It  was  Anthony's  studio  assistant;  you 
remember,  the  lad  that  died  just  before  our 
Roman  Prize  was  awarded.  If  you've  looked  at 
the  painting,  you  know,  of  course,  there's  dia- 
bolically clever  work  in  it.  Those  pearls — 7 
could  n't  surpass  them!  But  if  you  saw  only  that 
portrait  (and  right  there,  if  you  please,  there's 
something  that  Master  Hal  will  have  to  explain 
off  the  map!)  how  on  earth  did  you  happen  to 
find  my  landscape?" 

Saltonstall  smiled  in  his  sad  way.  "Well,  I 
wanted  to  be  sure  Wrayne  had  kept  his  word 
about  hiding  the  picture,  so  I  dropped  in  on  him 
unexpectedly,  yesterday  afternoon.  Wrayne  was 
all  right!  The  thing  was  swathed  and  roped  and 
even  sealed.  In  fact,  he  had  insisted  on  calling  in 
that  famulus  of  his  the  day  before,  when  I  was 
there,  and  having  him  do  all  that  in  my  very 
presence,  while  he  and  I  sat  back  and  watched." 

"Perfectly  good  gesture,"  laughed  Maurice. 

"Oh,  yes,  and  in  the  grand  style,  I  assure  you! 
Queer  chap,  Wrayne,  but  he'll  succeed,  even 
[41  1 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

though  he  does  n't  yet  know  the  rudiments  of  his 
trade.  Can  you  believe  it,  he  had  not  observed 
that  the  painting  was  on  wood  instead  of  canvas! 
I  was  wild  to  see  it  again;  I  made  him  uncover  it 
and  show  it  to  me.  My  wrath  had  n't  gone  down 
with  the  sun,  I  can  tell  you,  but  I  had  sense 
enough  left  to  see  that  the  frame  was  quite  out 
of  the  common;  good  as  the  Stanford  White 
frames,  but  different.  So  I  stepped  behind  to 
find  the  maker's  name,  if  I  could;  and  behold, 
a  landscape  of  great  Price!  Wrayne  never  even 
knew  it  was  there.  Mistake  of  that  famulus,  I 
believe." 

"You  liked  it?"  Maurice  put  the  question 
almost  timidly.  The  landscape  he  loved  seemed 
to  him  suddenly  to  lose  importance,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  his  friend's  deep  feeling. 

"You've  surpassed  your  best  self  in  it!  I  can't 
tell  why,  but  there's  something  in  it  that  assuages 
for  me  the  grief  of  things;  something  of  yourself 
that  you  've  put  into  it,  I  suppose,  —  some  beauty 
or  solemnity  that  was  not  there,  really,  until  you 
yourself  brought  it  there,  with  your  own  two 
hands.  Perhaps  I  never  knew,  till  now,  why  men 
buy  landscapes  —  "  Saltonstall  spoke  dreamily. 
His  recollective  eyes,  looking  far  beyond  his 
[42  ] 


The  Amourette  Landscape 

listener,  seemed  to  peer  into  some  Paradise  not 
wholly  lost. 

Both  men  were  moved.  They  had  more  to  say 
to  each  other,  things  not  to  be  told  over  egg-shells 
and  coffee-stains. 

"I  suppose,"  hesitated  Maurice,  as  they  took 
their  hats,  "  you  wonder  why  I  never  painted  out 
that  figure  on  the  back,  at  any  rate,  before  I  sent 
off  the  landscape?" 

"Oh,  no,"  answered  the  other,  simply.  "I 
know  how  you  felt,  I  do,  indeed!  You  could  n't 
quite  bring  yourself  to  do  it,  could  you,  even 
though  you  tried?  Neither  could  I,  I  am  sure. 
Something  keeps  me  from  wanting  to  destroy  it; 
I  don't  yet  know  whether  it's  the  person  or  the 
painting!  Though,  of  course,  I  never  saw  any 
picture  of  Amouretta  that  was  really  right,  except 
that  one  little  thing  of  yours  you  showed  last 
winter  in  the  Vanderbilt  Gallery;  and  what's- 
his-name,  the  man  at  the  desk,  said  very  emphat- 
ically it  was  n't  for  sale  — " 

"No,"  interrupted  Maurice,  "it  wasn't  for 
sale,  and  never  will  be.  It  is  one  of  the  few  things 
I  could  n't  take  money  for!  My  wife  and  I  in- 
tended to  give  it  as  a  wedding-present  to  Amour- 
etta. We  both  of  us  loved  that  child;  we  felt  her 
[431 


The  Amouretta  Landscape 

roseleaf  exquisiteness !  Helen  was  so  happy,  tying 
up  that  little  portrait  in  white  paper.  And  after- 
wards, —  well,  I  boxed  it  up  and  addressed  it  to 
you,  with  a  note  explaining  it  and  begging  you  to 
keep  it.  But  it  was  overlooked  and  forgotten, 
during  my  illness;  and  when  I  got  up,  I  found  I 
had  lost  my  nerve  about  sending  it  to  you.  I 
feared  you  might  not  like  it,  or  worse  yet,  might 
think  I  was  trying  to  sell  you  something  — " 

"Oh,  Maurice  Price,"  sighed  the  collector, 
"then  even  you  did  n't  know  how  much  I  needed 
Amouretta,  and  anything  that  would  recall  her 
truly,  just  as  she  was,  and  not  as  those  who  did  n't 
know  her  imagined  her  to  be?  We  Saltonstalls — " 
But  the  rest  was  lost  in  the  roar  of  the  traffic, 
as  the  men  crossed  the  avenue,  and  walked  rapidly 
together  toward  the  Court  of  New  Departures. 
It  was  not  too  late  in  the  day  to  read  the  morning 
lesson  to  young  Hal;  it  would  do  him  good.  After 
all,  though,  he  was  a  plucky  chap;  the  sooner  he 
had  whatever  per  cent  was  coming  to  him,  the 
better.  An  amicable  three-cornered  arrangement 
could  be  made,  about  that.  Certainly,  where 
there's  a  quartette  of  skirts,  somebody  must 
pay  the  piper  1 


BITS  OF  CLAY 

WHAT  a  curious  thing  is  a  piece  of  clay,  and, 
dear  Lord,  how  willing  it  is,  under  our  fin- 
gers !  Look  now,  here  is  a  bit  of  clay,  no  larger  than 
a  pullet's  egg,  and  no  one  knows  what  may  come 
of  it.  Shall  I  mould  you  a  few  petals,  with  my 
thumb  and  forefinger,  like  this,  and  then  shape  up 
a  closed  golden  heart,  like  that,  and  next  fuss  and 
fuse  them  all  together,  thus?  You  see,  it  is  a  rose! 
It  has  all  the  form  a  clay  rose  need  ask,  for  the 
moment;  if  it  had  but  color  and  perfume,  it 
might  be  the  rose  of  the  world!  However,  I  set  no 
great  store  by  it;  I  shall  tear  my  rose  in  twain,  to 
please  you;  and  if  you  like,  I  will  pinch  up  the 
lesser  part  into  a  bishop's  mitre,  and  the  greater 
part  into  a  churchly  face,  no  feature  lacking.  In- 
deed, I  will  put  in  as  many  features  as  you  sug- 
gest, though,  of  course,  from  the  modern  point  of 
view,  too  few  are  better  than  too  many. 

Will  you  have  Stephen  Langton,  or  Thomas  a 

Becket,  or  Saint   Francis  himself,  God  reward 

him,  or  would  you  prefer  my  dear  old  neighbor 

there  across  the  street,  Father  Geronimo  of  the 

[45  1 


Bits  of  Clay 

Carmelites?  One  is  as  easy  as  the  other,  when  the 
clay  is  obedient.  Or  if  by  mischance  you  do  not 
"  love  a  priest  and  love  a  cowl  and  love  a  prophet  of 
the  soul,"  I  can  easily  transform  my  monk  into  — 
You  would  like  to  go  back  to  that  rose-of-the- 
world  idea?  Very  well,  we  shall  make  the  hood 
into  a  mantilla,  thus,  and  the  good  priestly  face 
into  the  flowerlike  countenance  of  a  girl.  The 
flower  must  have  a  stem,  too,  a  well-rounded, 
slender  stem;  and  the  petal  of  her  lower  lip  needs 
caressing.  Surely  you  see  that  it  is  a  girl;  a  se- 
fiorita,  signora,  fraulein,  mademoiselle,  miss.  A 
lady  of  any  country;  yes,  perhaps  even  the  gra- 
cious Madonna  of  all  lands!  What  a  curious 
thing  is  a  piece  of  clay,  and  how  willing  it  is  under 
the  fingers! 

The  boy  Raymond  Brooke  had  often  seen  and 
heard  his  father  the  sculptor  do  and  say  such 
things,  while  resting. 

But  —  but  —  it  was  nevertheless  a  mistake  of 
the  boy  Raymond,  when,  on  finding  a  bit  of  clay 
in  his  hands,  he  looked  about  him  with  starry 
eyes,  seeking  something  to  adorn,  with  whatever 
he  and  his  accomplice  clay  should  create.  And  I 
hold  it  very  strange,  too,  that  on  this  bright  June 
morning,  with  all  the  beautiful  shapes  still  un- 
[46] 


Bits  of  Clay 

summoned  from  the  deep,  he  could  think  of  noth- 
ing better  to  mould  into  a  fine  symmetry  than  a 
pair  of  fierce  moustaches  and  a  goatee;  and  fur- 
ther, that  he  could  discover  no  better  use  for 
these  vain  ornaments  than  to  affix  them  neatly 
upon  the  countenance  of  the  clay  lady  in  his 
father's  studio,  that  noble  new-made  portrait  of 
the  venerable  mistress  of  Highcourt. 

Raymond  was  seven.  Surely  at  this  age,  if  ever, 
a  child  should  show  himself  "  un  enfant  dijd,  raison- 
nable."  The  new  governess  had  said  so;  she  had 
added,  in  gentle  despair,  that  without  doubt  it 
was  different  with  the  children  of  artists  and  the 
criminal  classes.  She  was  a  puzzle-headed  young 
creature  from  the  devastated  regions,  and  not  yet 
hardened  to  life's  surprises.  Her  career  among  us 
had  early  been  darkened  by  the  discovery  that 
the  children  of  American  artists  have  no  real  feel- 
ing for  the  relative  pronoun,  in  French.  And 
what,  she  passionately  demanded  of  the  elder 
Brooke  girl,  what  would  our  noble  French  litera- 
ture be,  without  its  relative  pronouns?  She  was 
in  earnest,  and  looked  very  pretty  and  bright- 
eyed  as  she  asked  it.  Raymond,  poor  Nordic,  was 
fascinated  by  that  slender  dark  streak  above  her 
upper  lip.  It  seemed  very  firm  and  permanent, 
[47) 


Bits  of  Clay 

yet  fragile  and  downy,  too;  he  wondered  whether, 
if  you  touched  it,  it  would  vanish.  But  Made- 
moiselle chose  that  moment  to  inquire  of  him,  the 
youngest  infant  of  the  Brooke  trio,  whether  he 
had  the  very  smallest  idea  what  a  relative  pro- 
noun was,  or  even  an  ordinary  pronoun,  for  ex- 
ample! Raymond  was  either  unable  or  unwilling 
to  throw  light  on  the  situation,  and  had  fled  to- 
ward the  studio  to  escape  his  responsibilities. 
From  Scylla  to  Charybdis,  from  French  literature 
to  American  art!  He  was  not  thinking  of  his  pro- 
nouns, either;  he  was  thinking  of  that  downy 
shadow.  But  this,  I  admit,  scarcely  excuses  his 
grotesque  conduct. 

His  father  was  not  in  the  studio;  the  clay  lady 
reigned  supreme;  a  fine  challenging  old  lady  she 
was,  drawing  her  breath  with  that  superb  kindli- 
ness the  clay  allows.  The  portrait  was  still,  ac- 
cording to  its  creator,  in  the  chrysalis  stage. 
Later,  it  would  be  transformed  into  white  plaster, 
and  later  yet,  if  luck  held,  it  would  issue,  gleam- 
ing and  triumphant,  in  spotless  Carrara.  The 
sculptor  was  by  no  means  dissatisfied  with  that 
clay  portrait;  the  world  called  it  a  speaking  like- 
ness. He  himself  found  it  a  trace  too  masculine, 
perhaps;  but  that  was  inevitable,  with  a  type 
[48] 


Bits  of  Clay 

so  full  of  high  character.  He  was  glad  it  was 
so,  because  he  knew  well  enough  that  the  marble 
would  only  too  easily  soften  and  spiritualize  his 
interpretation  of  the  old  lady  of  Highcourt,  with 
her  white  hair  nobly  tossed  up  from  her  candid 
brow. 

She  was  a  very  beautiful  old  lady,  truly;  no  one 
denied  that;  straight  as  an  arrow  and  graceful  as 
a  palm,  for  all  her  seventy  years;  not  fat,  not  lean; 
greatly  given  to  charming  clothes,  too,  and  not 
particularly  scandalized  by  our  shocking  modern 
custom  of  short  skirts  for  all,  especially  grand- 
mothers. You  see  her  own  feet  were  very  shapely. 
And  her  profile  was  that  of  Cato's  daughter,  soft- 
ened by  centuries.  All  the  little  wrinkles  around 
her  eyes  were  kind  and  smiling  ones.  No  wonder 
those  college  girls  had  voted  that  the  old  lady  of 
Highcourt  should  be  immortalized  in  fair  Carrara, 
at  a  fair  price,  and  shrined  in  a  niche  in  their 
stately  new  Library,  her  gift. 

But  Raymond,  you  remember,  was  only  seven 
years  high  in  his  sandal  shoon.  His  nose  hardly 
reached  to  the  top  of  the  modelling-stand.  He  was 
forced  to  mount  a  box  to  carry  out  his  decorative 
intentions.  The  little  typewriter  box  would  do. 
Now!  A  slender  sausage  of  clay  moustache  on  the 
[49] 


Bits  of  Clay 

left  of  the  lady's  mouth,  another  on  the  right; 
for  the  chin,  a  rather  stouter  lump.  No  compro- 
mises anywhere;  swift  work,  and  sure.  Raymond 
stepped  down  from  his  box,  and  walked  slowly 
backward,  quite  in  his  father's  manner,  to  study 
the  effect.  Alas,  how  brief  is  the  delirium  of  de- 
sign! Raymond's  flight  of  genius  was  over,  and 
the  result  appalled  him. 

Indeed,  it  was  rather  remarkable,  that  trans- 
formation; and  very  curious  is  the  power  of  a  bit 
of  clay,  in  willing  fingers!  That  beautifully  mod- 
elled countenance  no  longer  suggested  Madam 
Randolph  of  Highcourt;  it  had  become  the  face 
of  some  Light-Horse  Harry,  some  devil-may-care 
D'Arcy  of  the  Guards.  If  that  portrait  had  been 
scarce  feminine  enough  before,  what  was  it  now, 
with  those  singular  additions  bristling  from  lips 
and  chin?  A  warrior,  no  less.  A  moment  ago,  a 
lady;  at  present,  a  grenadier!  An  uninstructed 
observer,  suddenly  encountering  that  piece  of 
family  sculpture,  might  well  ask,  in  his  bewilder- 
ment, "  But  why  does  the  noble  Confederate  of- 
ficer wear  a  lace  kerchief  over  his  epaulets? " 

Raymond  himself  could  no  longer  endure  the 
power  of  his  own  performance.  He  darted  back 
toward  his  box,  to  annul  his  handiwork.  Too 
I  50] 


B  its  of  Clay 

late!  In  his  terror  he  heard  a  voice  in  the  garden, 
near  at  hand;  his  father  was  talking  with  the  old 
lady  of  Highcourt. 

Having  finished  their  excellent  morning  sitting 
(indeed,  it  was  the  last  sitting  that  would  be 
needed  until  marble-time  should  come),  artist  and 
model  had  strayed  into  the  garden  to  see  the  An- 
tonin  Mercie"  phlox  in  all  its  glory;  Raymond's 
father  made  a  specialty  of  that,  in  honor  of 
M.  Mercie,  his  old  master  in  sculpture.  The  two 
had  touched  lightly  on  many  topics,  —  phlox, 
M.  Mercie,  old  masters,  sculpture,  —  gue  sais-je? 
And  now  the  old  lady  of  Highcourt,  with  a  new 
thrill  in  her  voice,  was  speaking  very  earnestly 
about  a  projected  portrait  in  bronze,  a  work  the 
sculptor  seemed  unwilling  to  undertake.  He  said, 
with  force,  that  he  much  preferred  to  work  from 
life.  In  working  from  photographs,  he  could  n't 
do  justice  to  himself,  or  his  subject,  or  his  client. 
And  the  old  lady  was  ruthlessly  chaffing  him  be- 
cause, in  his  Northern  way,  he  was  putting  him- 
self, the  artist,  first,  and  herself,  the  client,  last. 
Her  face  beamed  with  mischief  as  she  spoke.  Be- 
ware of  that  old  lady,  she  has  her  designs  on  the 
sculptor;  she  means,  by  hook  or  by  crook,  to  make 
him  do  her  bidding !  She  has  managed  many  men, 


Bits  of  Clay 

in  her  time;  and  always  in  her  own  way,  so  that 
they  shall  not  perceive  what  is  happening  to  them, 
until  at  last  they  have  become  the  willing  clay  hi 
her  fingers. 

However,  Mr.  Brooke  was  holding  out  bravely; 
I  '11  say  that  for  him.  He  had  had  previous  expe- 
rience in  making  bronze  portraits  of  dear  women's 
dead  fathers.  He  well  knew  that  the  odds  were 
bitterly  against  any  artist  who  should  pledge  him- 
self to  show  forth  Father,  in  his  era  of  prosperity, 
just  by  imagining  all  things  from  a  dim,  lean  pro- 
file of  Father  in  his  salad  days.  In  short,  accord- 
ing to  Mr.  Brooke,  we  were  now  in  the  nineteen- 
twenties;  and  back  in  the  nineteen-tens,  he  had 
taken  an  oath,  had  Mr.  Brooke,  never  again  to 
interpret  for  the  world,  by  means  of  the  willing 
clay,  just  how  a  great  man  who  died  in  the  eight- 
een-eighties  really  looked  in  the  eighteen-seven- 
ties,  when  all  there  was  to  go  by  was  a  wraithlike, 
looking-glassy  daguerreotype  of  the  eighteen- 
sixties.  Yes,  Madam,  no  matter  how  elegant  the 
crimson  velvet  brocade  that  lined  the  little 
leather  case!  The  old  lady  of  Highcourt  had 
plenty  to  say  in  answer  to  that;  but  long  before 
she  had  begun  to  say  it,  the  culprit  Raymond, 
stricken  by  the  lightning  of  his  own  genius,  had 
[  52] 


Bits  of  Clay 

fled  away,  away  on  sandalled  feet,  to  hide  behind 
the  tomato  plants  and  the  tall  corn. 

A  great  persuader,  Madam  Randolph!  She  re- 
fused to  see  herself  as  beaten.  "I  don't  ask  you 
to  promise  me  anything  to-day.  I  only  ask  you 
to  give  this  matter  your  prayerful  consideration. 
And  would  n't  it  be  rather  criminal  on  your  part 
if  you,  a  strong  man,  should  allow  me,  a  weak  old 
lady,  to  degrade  our  American  art  by  giving  this 
commission  to  some  one  else,  who  would  no  doubt 
make  a  bigger  mess  of  it  than  you  will?  Mr. 
Brooke,  you  don't  know  how  much  I  want  to 
leave  behind  me,  for  those  grandsons  of  mine,  at 
least  some  inkling  of  what  my  honored  father 
looked  like  in  Civil  War  days!" 

They  were  stepping  into  the  studio.  It  was  a 
high  step,  but  the  old  lady  was  a  high-stepper, 
and  Mr.  Brooke  chuckled  over  her  disdain  of  his 
helping  hand.  Suddenly  his  smile  vanished.  A 
look  of  incredulous  horror  engulfed  it  utterly. 
His  precious  handiwork  had  been  profaned, 
Southern  womanhood  insulted! 

"Good  God,  what  devil  has  been  here?"  He 
himself  groaned  aloud  the  shameful  answer, 
"That  devil  Raymond!" 

It  is  hard  to  find  a  really  neat  thing  to  say  at 
[531 


Bits  of  Clay 

such  moments;  luckily  actions  speak  louder  than 
words.  In  wrathful  haste,  the  sculptor  strode 
forward  to  kick  away  Raymond's  box,  and  to  tear 
off  those  bits  of  clay  foully  misplaced  on  the  por- 
trait of  a  lady. 

But  the  dame  of  Highcourt,  though  in  her  sev- 
enties, had  a  longer  and  quicker  sight  than  even 
Mr.  Brooke  himself;  she  had  a  larger  experience 
in  the  misdeeds  of  the  young;  it  was  she,  not  the 
sculptor,  who  had  spied  those  sandalled  feet  wing- 
ing toward  the  tomato  plants.  And  indeed  she 
was  a  valiant  little  old  person,  whom  life  had 
trained  to  all  sorts  of  ready  readjustments.  Long 
before  Mr.  Brooke  had  worked  himself  up  to  any- 
where near  the  height  of  passion  he  fully  intended 
to  reach,  Madam  Randolph  had  viewed  the  situ- 
ation by  and  large,  and  had  resolved  it  into  its 
elements.  With  a  singular  phrase,  borrowed  no 
doubt  from  her  grandchildren,  she  pulled  our 
sculptor  down  on  his  haunches,  so  to  speak;  she 
stayed  his  hand  in  midair. 

"Cut  it  out,  old  dear,"  she  said  soothingly,  as 
if  she  were  reining  in  her  favorite  thoroughbred. 
"And  oh,  won't  you  please,  please,  stop,  look, 
listen?  Mr.  Brooke,  Mr.  Brooke,  can't  you  see 
what  it  looks  like?  Dear  sculptor-in- wrath,  it's 
I  54] 


Bits  of  Clay 

my  father,  Dad  to  the  life;  it  is,  indeed,  Captain 
Carteret!  Ask  any  one  who  ever  saw  him.  All  it 
needs  is  the  uniform!"  And  she  brandished  in 
triumph  before  Mr.  Brooke  the  dim  daguerreo- 
type he  had  just  refused  to  consider. 

Well,  what  can  we  all  do  when  events  literally 
leap  out  of  our  hands,  and  shape  themselves 
firmly,  in  defiance  of  our  ethics  and  ultimatums? 
An  old  lady  and  a  piece  of  clay  are  matters  to  be 
considered;  they  are  curiously  frail  things  under 
our  fingers;  we  shall  not  shatter  them  unneces- 
sarily. Mr.  Brooke  saw  that  Madam  Randolph 
was  right,  in  the  main;  and  when  she  said,  in  a 
voice  trembling  between  laughter  and  tears,  "You 
will  add  years  to  my  life  if  you  do  what  I  ask," 
what  could  he  do  but  yield?  There  were  to  be 
two  portraits,  then;  that  was  settled.  The  lady's 
would  be  in  marble,  the  officer's  in  bronze;  Ray- 
mond's genius  for  clay  had  arranged  it.  But  Mr. 
Brooke,  for  all  Madam  Randolph's  challenging 
eyes,  refused  to  model  those  moustaches  in  her 
presence. 

"No  doubt  my  boy  Raymond  might  do  it," 

he  said,  with  a  slight  acerbity.   "  He  appears  to 

have  the  soul  of  a  barber."  He  was  still  smarting 

a  little  from  the  profanation  of  his  own  sacred 

[  55  1 


Bits  of  Clay 

handiwork;  one  did  not  expect  a  woman  to  under- 
stand how  one  felt  about  such  things. 

Who  shall  measure  man's  ingratitude?  Was 
Raymond  ever  congratulated  upon  his  own  small 
part  in  that  day's  playlet?  Not  at  all.  Behind  the 
tomato  plants,  in  the  cool  of  the  evening,  could 
be  heard  the  lamentations  of  a  small  boy;  and  be- 
hind the  small  boy  —  but  I  make  an  end. 

In  his  little  white  bed,  a  subdued  Raymond 
sobbed  out  repentance,  in  long-drawn  gusts.  "  Oh , 
mother  dear,  I  did  n't  mean  to  spoil  father's  lovely 
lady,  I  didn't,  I  didn't!"  His  mother  said  to 
herself,  in  fine  disdain  of  human  decisions,  "And 
this  poor  suffering  child  must  not  be  told  what  a 
lucky  thing  for  him  his  badness  really  is;  he  must 
not  find  out  that  his  disgraceful  act  has  put  into 
our  family  coffers  enough  to  earn  him  his  new 
pony!"  She  marvelled  at  the  complexities,  nay, 
the  complicities  of  parenthood.  And  Raymond, 
soon  to  be  cast  up  safely  into  dreamland  on  the 
ebbing  tide  of  remorse,  repeated,  in  a  diminuendo 
of  infantine  rhythms,  "Mademoiselle  ast  me  so 
very  suddingly  something  I  could  n't  know  —  I 
only  wanted  to  see  how  the  lady  would  look,  with 
whiskers  —  I  made  'em  just  like  Mr.  Smith's  at 
the  grocery-store  —  The  clay  felt  so  curious  under 
my  fingers — " 


THE  YOUNG  LADY  IN  BLUE' 

AS  my  wife  says,  I  am  by  nature  unduly  sen- 
sitive to  beauty.  You  would  hardly  expect 
this  fault  in  a  sculptor  —  you  who  perhaps  judge 
all  sculptors  from  the  war  memorials  you  have 
seen.  And  with  me,  the  worst  of  it  is,  I  am  even 
more  susceptible  to  color  than  to  form.  My  long 
acquaintance  with  form  has  put  me  on  my  guard 
against  its  wiles,  and  my  joy  in  beautiful  shapes 
is  forever  enhanced  by  the  free  play  of  my  crit- 
ical faculty.  But  in  the  presence  of  lovely  color, 
I  am  unarmed,  weak-kneed.  All  I  can  do  is  to 
take  pleasure  in  it,  for  I  do  not  know  enough 
about  it  to  be  critical,  in  any  satisfying  way.  This 
explains  why  I  fell,  and  fell  far,  for  the  young 
lady  in  blue.  I  admit  that  I  would  not  have 
done  for  Senator  Bullwinkle  just  what  I  did  for 
her. 

Yet,  when  I  first  saw  the  young  lady,  she  was 
not  in  blue,  if  you  forget  for  a  moment  her  forget- 
me-not  eyes.  She  was  in  deepest  black,  and,  I 
have  reason  to  believe,  the  most  expensive  and 
fashionable  black  to  be  had  in  New  York.  Gigi 
[  57  1 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

Arcangelo,  my  seldom-sinning  super-assistant, 
broke  all  the  rules  of  the  studio  when  he  let  her  in, 
that  bright  May  afternoon.  Gigi  knew  perfectly 
well  that  after  a  vexatious  sitting  from  Senator 
Bullwinkle  (who,  in  order  to  keep  awake  while 
posing,  always  had  his  speeches  of  a  decade  ago 
read  aloud  to  him  by  my  wife)  I  would  be  in  no 
mood  for  trifling  with  mere  beauty.  Gigi  knew 
that  I  needed  three  hours  of  uninterrupted  work 
on  my  head  of  Christ,  before  I  could  well  show  it 
to  an  enlightened  Bishop;  he  knew  that  I  was  be- 
hind with  my  Iowa  figures;  he  knew  that  my  bust 
of  General  Daly  ought  to  have  been  finished, 
boxed,  and  shipped  a  month  before;  he  knew  that 
my  big  clay  relief  of  the  Spanker-Sampson  chil- 
dren had  developed  a  crack  across  the  nose  of  the 
middle  boy,  making  him  look  more  cross-eyed 
than  he  really  was,  so  that  his  likeness  was  wholly 
unfit  for  the  inspection  of  a  fond  and  fabulously 
rich  Middle- Western  aunt,  due  to  arrive  on  the 
Wednesday.  In  short,  Gigi  knew  that  I  was 
counting  on  this  priceless  afternoon,  of  all  the 
afternoons  of  my  life,  to  justify,  yes,  to  glorify, 
my  career  as  an  artist.  And  to  think  that  at  such 
a  time  as  this,  he  could  show  in  that  girl,  simply 
because,  as  he  afterward  explained,  to  do  other- 
I  58] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

wise  would  have  been,  for  him,  impossibile,  she 
was  si  bella,  bella !  Gigi  shared  my  weakness,  you 
observe;  he  too  was  pledged  to  beauty. 

At  arm's  length,  he  pushed  up  her  card  to  me 
as  I  stood  on  my  high  ladder.  The  name  was  a 
long  one,  beginning  with  C  and  ending  hi  en  — 
Chittenden,  of  course.  I  waved  away  the  name 
and  would  have  had  Gigi  do  likewise  by  the 
owner.  Too  late!  She  was  already  inside  the  door. 
Grudgingly  enough,  I  climbed  down  from  my 
head  of  Christ,  well  resolved  to  make  short  shrift 
of  the  girl  and  all  her  works.  But  even  before  I 
reached  the  ground,  I  was  somewhat  disarmed, 
because,  clad  wholly  in  black  as  she  was,  with  the 
heavenly  young  radiance  of  her  eyes  merging 
softly  into  the  fault  rosy  radiance  of  her  uplifted 
face  and  the  shadowed  golden  radiance  of  her  hair, 
while  the  three  radiances  together  were  enclosed 
within  the  black-rimmed,  transparent  circle  of  her 
veiled  hat,  she  was  beyond  any  mortal  doubt  an 
engaging  sight.  I  caught  myself  saying,  under  my 
breath,  "Oh,  happy  hat!"  This  struck  me  at  the 
time  as  an  asinine  remark,  even  when  privately 
made,  and  I  ascribed  it  to  the  spring  season. 
Looking  back,  I  see  that  the  observation  was 
quite  correct.  In  reality,  the  girl  was  just  a  com- 
[  59] 


Tie  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

plex  of  radiances,  bounded  by  black;  sweet  and 
twenty,  and  in  mourning. 

Walking  respectfully  behind  this  glorious  sad 
young  person  was  a  footman  who  failed  to  supply 
the  contrast  of  usefulness  to  beauty.  He  was  not 
even  carrying  the  white  oblong  box  which  was 
evidently  one  of  the  properties  of  this  ill-timed 
visit.  I  saw  with  relief  that  it  was  too  narrow  to 
contain  a  death-mask.  Miss  Chittenden  held  this 
box  between  her  hands  as  if  it  were  a  very  pre- 
cious thing;  a  fold  of  her  veil  had  been  laid  rever- 
ently around  its  corners.  In  her  unconsciousness 
of  self  and  in  her  absorption  in  the  business  that 
occupied  her,  she  seemed  to  me  a  figure  both 
sculptural  and  symbolic.  Turned  into  stone,  she 
would  have  been  a  Pandora  on  an  antique  vase,  or 
rather  a  Saint  Cunegonde  or  Saint  Scholastica 
weathering  the  centuries  on  some  mediaeval  por- 
tal. All  her  motions  had  a  kind  of  free  and  classic 
largeness  mingled  with  their  high-heeled  modern- 
ness;  yet  her  attitude  toward  that  box  was,  as  I 
told  myself,  purest  Gothic. 

As  we  undid  the  box  together,  Miss  Chittenden 
explained  that  ever  since  she  had  seen  my  statu- 
ette of  a  Dancer  in  the  new  Museum  in  her  home 
town,  more  than  a  year  ago,  she  had  longed  above 
[60] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

all  things  to  possess  a  piece  of  marble  from  my 
chisel,  my  own  chisel;  "the  personal  touch,  you 
know!"  So  (and  here  the  forget-me-not  eyes  be- 
came more  misty  and  the  young  voice  more  vi- 
brant) when  her  mother  died,  in  April,  she  had  had 
a  cast  made  from  her  mother's  hand,  which  to  her 
was  the  most  beautiful  thing  in  the  world;  and  she 
hoped,  oh,  so  much,  that  I  would  be  willing  to 
copy  it  for  her  in  marble.  Done  in  the  way  I  would 
do  it,  she  was  good  enough  to  say,  it  would  be 
something  really  living  —  something  she  could 
have  and  love  forever  and  ever. 

My  dismay  was  complete.  Indeed,  copying 
plaster  casts  in  marble  was  not  at  all  in  my  line. 
Right  or  wrong,  I  felt  myself  capable  of  higher 
things.  Apparently  this  Miss  Chittenden  was 
not  only  classic,  mediaeval,  and  modern,  but  also 
quite  Victorian,  all  in  the  same  breath.  For 
surely  it  was  a  preposterous  Victorian  idea  of  hers 
to  want  a  marble  hand !  As  we  drew  the  cast  from 
its  wrappings,  its  fragile  beauty  moved  me,  I  con- 
fess; but  I  steeled  myself,  steadfastly  considering 
how  on  earth,  without  hurting  the  girl's  feelings,  I 
could  make  her  understand  my  point  of  view. 

"The  hand  is  perfection  itself,"  said  I,  in  all 
honesty.  "And,"  I  added,  glancing  at  her  own 
I  61  ] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

hand,  from  which  she  had  removed  her  ugly 
black  glove,  the  better  to  handle  the  cast,  "it  is 
very  like  your  own,  in  construction;  I  mean  —  " 

"You  mean  my  hand  is  built  like  hers,  but  it's 
not  so  pretty  — " 

"Not  so  small,  certainly!"  I  wondered  whether 
this  might  vex  her  a  bit,  on  her  Victorian  side. 
But  no,  she  seemed  rather  pleased  than  other- 
wise. 

"I'm  three  inches  taller  than  mother  was,"  she 
observed,  cheerily.  "Her  size  hand  would  n't 
have  looked  at  all  well,  on  me." 

Really  this  girl  had  some  sense.  Besides,  she 
was  quick  to  divine  that  the  commission  she  was 
offering  me  was  not  precisely  attractive  to  me. 
She  seemed  to  search  for  the  cause. 

"You  know,"  she  said,  eagerly,  "I  wouldn't 
want  to  hamper  you  in  your  imagination!  Oh,  no, 
not  that!  I  would  n't  dream  of  asking  you  to  copy 
the  cast  just  as  it  is.  It  would  be  all  right  if  you 
put  in  a  Bible  or  something  under  the  hand,  and 
some  lace  around  the  wrist,  or  some  knitting- 
work  and  knitting-needles  sticking  out  from  the 
book.  Mother  often  left  her  knitting  at  a  favorite 
passage,  so  that  when  I  came  to  put  away  her 
work  at  night,  as  I  always  did,  I  might  guess  what 
[62  ] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

text  it  was  that  interested  her.  We  made  a  regu- 
lar game  of  it.  And"  (here  she  flushed  and  hesi- 
tated) "I'm  perfectly  willing  and  able  to  pay  the 
going  price  for  any  extras  you  put  in.  Only,  I 
don't  really  know  much  about  such  things."  Her 
smile  was  wistful,  rather  than  embarrassed;  but 
in  an  instant,  it  had  widened  into  a  boyish  and 
wholly  fascinating  grin.  "I  don't  know  whether 
it  shows  on  me  or  not,  but  this  is  the  first  time 
I  Ve  ever  been  East.  I  suppose  I  'm  not  so  —  so- 
phisticated and  so  on  —  as  if  I  'd  had  a  genuine 
Eastern  education,  as  mother  had.  Oh,  but  you 
don't  know  what  it  is  to  have  first  a  Missouri 
uncle  and  then  a  Fifth  Avenue  aunt  protecting 
you  to  death,  every  step  you  take!  I  might  have 
asked  Auntie  all  about  this  kind  of  thing,  of 
course.  She  has  lived  in  New  York  always,  and 
knows  the  ropes.  You  see,  I  'm  staying  with  her 
until  I  go  abroad  in  June.  But,  I  just  did  n't 
want  to  talk  with  her  about  it.  I  'm  my  own  mis- 
tress, now!  The  moment  I  saw  that  Dancer  of 
yours,  I  said  to  myself,  'When  I  come  into  my 
own  money,  I  shall  have  that  man  carve  a  piece 
of  marble  for  me,  and  do  something  to  elevate 
American  art!'  And  now  the  time  is  come. " 
What  I  ought  to  have  said  then  was  this:  "My 
[63  ] 


Tloe  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

dear  young  lady,  if  you  really  want  to  advance 
your  country's  art  (and  very  laudable  it  is  on  your 
part!)  and  if  you  insist  that  your  heart's  desire  is 
to  be  carried  out  in  marble,  by  my  chisel,  as  you 
put  it,  why  in  the  name  of  all  that's  young  and 
gay  and  jubilant  don't  you  ask  me  to  do  you  a 
dancer,  or  a  fountain  figure,  or  a  nymph,  or  a 
faun,  or  even  a  mantelpiece,  with  some  joyous 
caryatids?"  But  I  didn't  say  anything  of  the 
kind.  Besides,  a  horrid  thought  came  to  me  that 
perhaps  she  might  not  understand  caryatid,  or 
might  get  the  word  confused  with  hermaphrodite, 
as  I  have  observed  that  tourists  returning  from 
Italian  galleries  sometimes  do,  even  when  duly 
instructed.  Indeed,  the  forget-me-not  eyes  rested 
so  lovingly  on  the  plaster  cast  that  I  had  n't  the 
heart  to  be  coldly  frank  with  her,  and  to  tell  her 
that  in  a  few  years  the  marble  hand  she  now 
wanted  might  seem  an  encumbrance;  something 
that  for  old  sake's  sake  she  could  n't  bear  to  tuck 
away  in  the  attic,  and  yet  something  that  one 
really  could  n't,  if  one  kept  up  with  the  times, 
put  in  a  glass  case  on  a  library  shelf,  or  on 
one's  own  dressing-table.  Some  of  our  sculptors 
might  have  managed  it.  I  can  imagine  that  brute 
of  a  Schneider,  for  example,  telling  her  that  there 
[64] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

was  nothing  in  it  for  her;  that  a  "marple  hant 
would  be  too  pig  for  a  baber-wade,  and  too  liddle 
for  a  lawn-tecoration."  He  would  be  able  to  sug- 
gest that  the  proper  move  for  her  to  make  would 
be  to  build  a  fine  large  monument  to  her  mother, 
with  the  hand  "joost  as  a  veature."  But  since 
I 'm  not  Schneider,  all  I  could  say  was,  "This  cast 
is  beautiful,  indeed,  but  are  n't  you  afraid  that 
when  translated  into  marble,  it  will  no  longer 
seem  so  lovely  and  so  living  to  you?  " 

"Ah,  but,"  persisted  the  girl,  "the  marble  of 
it  is  part  of  all  I  want!  All  I  want  is  mother's 
hand,  done  by  your  hand."  She  blushed,  and  so 
did  I. 

"It's  very  kind  of  you  to  want  my  work,"  I 
stammered.  "Really,  it  makes  me  feel  awfully 
grateful,  and  humble,  too!  But  do  you  realize 
that  very  few  of  our  sculptors  carve  in  marble 
the  things  they  model  in  clay?  The  custom  is,  to 
let  some  carver,  generally  an  Italian,  do  most  if 
not  all  of  the  marble-carving,  just  as  it 's  the  cus- 
tom to  have  a  bronze  foundry  cast  our  bronze 
statues.  You  see,"  I  went  on,  warming  to  my 
task  of  educating  this  bright  being,  "things  are 
different  now  from  what  they  were  in  Cellini's 
time,  or  Michael  Angelo's.  In  Renaissance  days, 
[65  ] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

a  sculptor  could  do  the  whole  job  from  start  to 
finish,  if  he  wanted  to,  but  to-day,  he  can't,  and 
does  n't  want  to.  He  saves  himself  for  what  he 
fondly  thinks  is  the  imaginative  and  intellectual 
part.  He  models  in  clay,  of  course,  but  there 's  a 
lot  besides  that.  There's  building  armatures,  and 
making  plaster  casts,  and  so  on;  and  he  generally 
lets  Gigi  do  it." 

We  glanced  at  Gigi,  who,  for  the  second  time 
that  afternoon,  was  sinning.  Gigi  had  not  retired 
to  his  customary  labors  behind  the  burlap  cur- 
tain, but  was  standing  near  us,  carving  at  a  bit  of 
plaster  medallion,  ostensibly  turning  it  this  way 
and  that  to  get  a  better  light  on  it,  but  in  reality 
feasting  his  Latin  eyes  on  Miss  Chittenden's 
beauty.  And  then  Gigi,  usually  a  silent  soul,  did 
a  strange  thing.  He  began  to  talk,  very  eagerly. 

"The  hand  of  the  Signorina's  mother  is  truly 
beautiful."  (The  Signorina  giggled,  and  then  was 
shocked  by  her  own  levity.  She  told  me  after- 
ward that  she  could  n't  help  laughing;  she  had 
felt  as  if  Gigi  were  pouring  out  a  page  from  a  for- 
eign-language grammar  all  over  her.)  "  In  marble," 
continued  Gigi,  "the  marble  that  grows  in  my 
part  of  the  world,  how  very  fine  it  would  be!  I 
myself  could  well  begin  it,  and  the  Signer  could 
[66] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

finish  it.  You  have  seen  the  art  of  the  Signer! 
Many  sculptors  cannot  do  what  the  Signer  can. 
It  is  the  morbidezza/  The  others  do  not  attain  it." 

Miss  Chittenden  flashed  upon  Gigi  a  smile 
more  dazzling  than  any  she  had  yet  given  to  me. 
"Now  as  I  understand  it,"  she  cried,  "he  could 
rough  out  your  design  and  do  the  heavy  work  on 
it,  and  then  you  could  take  the  marble  and  finish 
it  up,  and  give  it  the  more  —  what-do-you-call- 
it?" 

We  all  three  laughed  aloud  at  that,  and  while  I 
was  trying  to  explain  to  the  girl,  as  tactfully  as 
possible,  that  after  she  had  been  abroad  and  seen 
the  works  of  art  in  many  countries,  she  might  not 
care  for  a  marble  hand  on  a  book,  even  with  lace 
at  the  wrist,  and  with  knitting-needles  sticking 
out  of  the  book,  Gigi  returned  to  his  den,  from 
which  one  then  heard  the  sound  of  hard  labor.  I 
was  finding  it  rather  difficult  to  convince  Miss 
Chittenden  that  she  was  asking  for  what  was  ob- 
solete, from  the  world's  point  of  view,  and  im- 
possible, from  mine.  I  tried  to  dissuade  her  by 
telling  her  that  it  would  be  only  a  fragment.  With 
astounding  quickness  she  replied,  "Oh,  but  that 
would  n't  matter,  would  it?  Lots  of  those  old 
part-gods  in  the  Museum  are  only  fragments,  and 
[67] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

yet  the  teachers  in  the  Art  Department  are  al- 
ways praising  them  up,  just  the  same!" 

Before  I  could  frame  an  answer  to  that,  Gigi 
emerged,  pushing  before  him  a  little  stand  on 
which  was  a  block  of  fine  pink  marble  which  I  had 
obtained  years  before,  in  peculiar  circumstances. 
It  was  a  piece  I  had  long  been  guarding  for  some 
future  master- work  of  mine  —  something  that 
was  to  be  absolutely  original,  yet  wholly  classic; 
one  has  such  dreams.  And  here  was  Gigi  showing 
it  to  that  girl!  His  admiration  for  her  had  be- 
come so  boundless  that  he  opened  up  his  heart  to 
her  in  all  the  three  languages  he  could  use.  If  the 
Signorina  would  deign,  he  would  explain  to  Made- 
moiselle that  this  was  a  little,  little  block  of  mar- 
ble which  his  own  cognato  had  stolen  one  night 
(knowing  it  to  be  a  good  action)  from  the  work- 
shop of  the  marvellous  Duomo  which  she  herself 
would  see  when  she  saw  the  most  beautiful  ca- 
thedral in  all  Italy!  And  his  brother-in-law  had 
sold  it  to  a  great  sculptor  who  was  visiting  Italy 
at  that  time,  but  of  course  did  not  know  it  was 
stolen.  (Gigi  was  lying  a  little,  but  his  lying 
blends  so  agreeably  with  his  candor  that  I  myself 
cannot  always  distinguish  one  from  the  other.) 

I  saw  that  the  blue-eyed  girl  was  thoroughly 
[68] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

enjoying  Gigi.  Though  this  was  before  the  day  of 
the  so-called  Greenwich  Village,  I  am  sure  that 
Miss  Chittenden  thought  that  now  at  last,  freed 
alike  from  her  Missouri  uncle  and  her  Fifth  Ave- 
nue aunt,  she  was  seeing  Bohemia;  perfectly  re- 
spectably too.  If  only  a  celebrated  model  or  two 
had  strayed  in,  her  happiness  would  have  been 
complete.  As  it  was,  she  garnered  up  Gigi's  say- 
ings with  the  same  single-hearted  attention  she 
had  given  to  my  own.  He  explained,  in  his  party- 
colored  way  of  speech,  that  this  little  block  was 
marvellously  fine  in  grain;  it  was  free  from  dark 
streaks,  too  —  he  would  stake  the  tomb  of  his 
fathers  on  that!  —  while  its  crowning  exquisite- 
ness  lay  in  its  color,  a  pale  surpassing  pink  as  of 
earliest  dawn  over  Tuscany.  There  was  no  other 
marble  in  the  world  quite  like  it.  That  was  why 
his  cognato  had  been  obliged  to  steal  it,  for  the 
sake  of  art.  If  you  had  any  taste  at  all,  any  love 
for  the  beautiful,  you  would  call  it  using,  not 
stealing!  And  again,  behold!  While  it  was  too 
small  for  a  head  (except  a  bambino's  head,  and  it 
was  a  little  too  long  for  that,  unless  you  wasted  a 
great  deal,  and  certainly  it  was  more  of  a  sin  to 
waste  such  marble  than  to  steal  it),  it  was  just 
exactly  the  right  size  for  the  dear  hand  of  the  Sig- 
[69] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

norina's  mother,  lying  upon  the  open  book,  or  even 
on  the  closed  book,  with  the  knitting-needles  pro- 
truding; difficult,  of  course,  but  where  there's  a 
wish,  there's  a  road  — 

I  stared  astounded  at  Gigi.  In  all  the  ten  years 
he  had  worked  for  me,  I  had  never  heard  from 
him  so  many  words  at  once.  I  could  not  dam  the 
flood. 

II  Ah,  oui"  he  pursued,  "certamente  Mademoi- 
selle could  have  the  lace  around  the  wrist,  if  she 
so  wished,  and  — " 

"No,  Gigi,"  I  interposed  firmly.  "The  lady 
cannot  have  the  lace.  Not  with  the  knitting- 
needles.  At  one  or  the  other  I  draw  the  line." 
Again,  we  three  laughed  together.  What  was 
there  about  this  dewy-eyed  girl  that  made  us  so 
natural  and  human?  Was  it  the  Missouri  in  her? 
Old  Schneider  was  from  Missouri,  but  he  never 
made  me  feel  human.  Was  it  her  beauty?  Very 
likely,  but  at  the  time,  I  doubted  it.  One  always 
does  doubt  it,  at  the  time.  The  result  was,  as  I 
have  already  confessed,  I  fell  for  the  girl  in  blue, 
as  I  was  to  call  her  in  later  days.  I  weakly  told 
her  that  if  Gigi  would  rough  out  the  hand  and  the 
book,  in  the  pale  pink  marble,  I  would  be  willing 
to  finish  it  for  her;  yes,  I  added  cynically,  I  would 
[  70] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

put  in  all  the  morbidezza  the  most  exacting  client 
could  require.  I  would  charge  her  four  hundred 
dollars  for  the  completed  work.  It  was  a  high 
price,  I  told  her.  Others  might  do  it  for  less;  not 
I.  And  mind,  there  were  to  be  no  knitting-needles 
and  no  lace,  unless  I  should  greatly  change  my 
idea.  She  drooped  visibly,  not  at  the  price,  which 
seemed  to  be  of  little  moment  to  her,  but  at  the 
loss  of  the  homely  details  in  the  work  by  which 
she  hoped  to  elevate  our  art.  To  console  her,  I 
said  that  I  would  probably  design  a  bit  of  drapery 
to  take  the  place  of  the  lace,  but  nothing  fussy  or 
obtrusive.  I  told  her  that  she  could  have  the 
thing  completed,  on  her  return  to  New  York,  a 
year  later.  Just  as  she  was  leaving  the  studio,  to 
rouse  the  footman  from  his  colored  supplement 
in  the  anteroom,  where  he  had  remained,  doubt- 
less under  orders  from  Auntie,  I  pulled  myself 
together  to  contemplate  the  extent  to  which  I 
had  fallen.  Perhaps  I  could  climb  up  again.  Per- 
haps my  high  ideals  in  art  were  not  lost  for- 
ever. 

"Remember,  Miss  Chittenden,"  said  I,  in  what 
I  hoped  would  be  an  impressive  manner,  "  remem- 
ber this!  If  after  you  have  visited  galleries  and 
studios  abroad,  and  seen  the  works  of  Rodin  and 
Dampt  and  Donatello  and  Bourdelle  and  Prax- 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

iteles  and  Maillol  and  a  few  others,  remember,  if 
one  year  later,  when  you've  had  more  observa- 
tion of  art,  you  should  no  longer  care  to  have  this 
hand  in  marble,  I  for  my  part  will  call  this  con- 
tract of  ours  null  and  void;  and  you  may  do  the 
same."  It  sounded  well,  as  I  said  it. 

The  blue-eyed  one  flashed  back  on  me  her 
friendly,  all-conquering  smile.  "I  shall  remem- 
ber," she  said.  "  But  you  know,  my  name  is  n't 
Chittenden,  at  all.  Never  was,  and  never  will  be, 
I  hope!  In  fact,  I  have  other  plans  —  but  no 
matter!  You  thought  I  was  a  chit,  and  so  you 
called  me  Chittenden  — " 

This  bit  of  girlish  reasoning  struck  me  as  being 
so  straight  from  Sigmund  Freud  that  I  was  dis- 
concerted. But  she  hastened  to  cover  my  confu- 
sion. 

"It's  all  right,"  she  laughed.  "I  did  n't  want 
to  take  up  your  time  by  correcting  a  perfectly 
reasonable  mistake.  And  if  you'd  rather  call  me 
Chittenden,  pray  do!  But  my  name  is  really 
Clarenden,  with  Mariellen  in  front.  See!"  She 
offered  me  another  of  her  cards.  Her  face  took  on 
a  look  of  charming  gravity  as  we  shook  hands. 
"Whatever  happens,"  she  said,  "I  know  you 
will  be  very  careful  of  the  plaster  cast.  I  know 
you  understand  my  feeling  about  it." 
[  72  ] 


Tie  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

The  following  April,  Mariellen  Clarenden  wrote 
to  me  from  Paris,  to  tell  me  that  I  might  expect 
her  in  my  studio  about  the  middle  of  May.  She 
had  visited  the  Salon,  she  said,  and  had  seen 
strange  sights  in  the  world  of  art.  Also,  she  had 
worked  hard  on  her  French;  luckily,  she  added, 
she  had  a  good  Missouri  foundation.  The  closing 
sentence  of  her  letter  went  to  my  head  a  little. 
"Mon  Dieu,"  she  wrote,  "Man  Dieu,  how  great 
you  are  —  you  and  Auguste  Rodin!"  "Mon 
Dieu,"  indeed!  Was  this  girl  becoming  sophisti- 
cated, like  the  others?  Tune  would  tell. 

Early  in  the  morning,  on  May  i5th,  I  had  a 
telephone  message  to  the  effect  that  Miss  Claren- 
den, according  to  promise,  would  revisit  my 
studio  promptly  at  ten,  if  I  would  permit.  As  I 
have  always  been  a  collector  of  coincidences,  I 
noted  with  zest  that  May  i5th  was  exactly  one 
year  from  the  date  of  my  absurd  one-sided  party- 
of-the-first-part  contract  concerning  the  marble 
hand.  I  further  noted,  not  without  dismay,  that 
Senator  Bull  winkle  was  to  have  his  final  sitting 
that  very  afternoon.  Still  adding  to  my  collec- 
tion, I  recalled  that  it  had  happened  like  that  the 
year  before;  Clarenden  day  had  been  Bullwinkle 
day,  a  day  of  mingled  sun  and  cloud. 
[  73  1 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

Now  that  Bullwinkle  bust  had  always  been  a 
vexation  to  my  spirit,  partly  because  old  Bull- 
winkle  had  so  often  played  truant,  instead  of 
giving  me  the  necessary  sittings.  He  was  forever 
travelling  about  the  country  for  political  pur- 
poses, or  else  attending  the  funerals  of  near  rela- 
tives. Sometimes  I  fancied  that  he  would  go  to 
any  lengths,  no  matter  how  criminal,  rather  than 
face  me  from  the  sitter's  chair.  The  commission, 
given  to  me  by  a  group  of  Bullwinkle  enthusiasts, 
was  to  be  handsomely  paid,  but  was  to  be  kept  a 
profound  secret  from  the  world  until  the  finished 
bronze  bust  should  be  set  in  place  as  the  crown- 
ing ornament  of  the  celebrated  five-million-dollar 
Bullwinkle  Building,  at  that  time  under  way.  To 
me,  there  was  something  rather  childish  about 
this  pseudo-secrecy,  openly  kept  up  for  nearly 
two  years.  But  above  all,  that  bust  bothered 
me  because  I  myself  had  not  yet  mastered  it. 
As  it  stood  there  in  the  searching  May  light,  I 
saw  in  its  loose  ends,  its  uninteresting  planes, 
its  prosaic  light-and-dark,  its  flabbiness  of  brow 
and  cheek,  its  dreary  wastes  of  shirt  bosom 
and  lapel,  only  a  monument  to  my  own  inca- 
pacity to  seize  and  reveal  the  characteristics  of 
my  subject;  —  to  tell  in  my  clay  all  the  news 
[  74] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

that  was  fit  to  print  about  him,  with  just  enough 
more  to  keep  the  spectator  guessing.  Lord,  how 
I  had  tried,  and  failed,  to  penetrate  the  Bull- 
winkle  personality!  At  first,  I  had  privately 
laughed  at  the  Senator  as  a  ridiculous  old  card, 
holding  on  to  the  present  and  yearning  toward  the 
future,  but  in  reality,  living  only  on  the  past  and 
its  triumphs.  Indeed,  his  middle  years  had  been 
a  pageant  of  triumphs.  Very  soon,  however,  I 
found  I  was  not  getting  on  with  my  work.  The 
man  worried  me.  I  could  not  discover  what  there 
was  within  him  that  had  lifted  him  above  the 
shoulders  of  the  crowd.  I  could  not  for  the  life  of 
me  isolate  his  own  private  germ  of  human  gran- 
deur, and  inoculate  my  clay  with  it.  Yet  I  ac- 
knowledged grandeur  in  him.  It  would  be  absurd 
to  attribute  to  anything  so  blind  as  chance  his 
astounding  command  over  human  votes. 

To  be  baffled  by  a  Bull  winkle  was  a  chastening 
lesson.  I  dreaded  that  afternoon  sitting.  My 
wife  was  away,  and  there  could  be  no  readings 
from  the  "  Congressional  Record."  What  would 
that  do  to  him?  Would  it  bring  him  out,  or  shut 
him  in?  To  get  a  running  start,  I  had  pulled  the 
bust  out  into  the  fresh  morning  light,  and  like  a 
dull  child  trying  to  find  his  place  in  yesterday's 
[  75  ] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

lesson,  I  was  fumbling  about  on  the  pedestal,  the 
shirt-front,  and  the  senatorial  dewlaps,  when  a 
ring  at  my  door  and  voices  in  the  anteroom 
warned  me  to  slip  a  cover  over  this  work  of  high 
secrecy. 

What  a  contrast  to  the  various  Bullwinkles  of 
my  career  was  the  young  lady  in  blue,  who  now 
stood  before  me!  This  time,  she  was  followed,  not 
by  a  mere  footman,  but  by  a  young  man  wearing 
her  colors  in  his  tie  and  his  heart  on  his  sleeve. 
There  they  were  in  their  victorious  springtide,  the 
suitor  and  the  suited;  for  there  could  be  no  earthly 
doubt  that  this  young  man  was  hers,  and  that  the 
two  were  lovers  forever.  That  was  evidently 
what  was  most  of  all  in  their  minds,  and  I,  for  one, 
thought  they  were  right.  Incredible  as  it  would 
have  seemed  to  me  if  I  had  not  been  there,  Miss 
Clarenden's  former  radiancy  was  enhanced  by  her 
new  experiences,  her  bright  garments.  What  an 
exquisite  thrilling  azure  was  that  of  her  veil  as  it 
fluttered  against  the  discreet  dark  blue  of  her 
costume!  Maxfield  Parrish  should  have  been 
there  to  immortalize  it.  Yet  I  did  not  regret  his 
absence,  at  the  time.  There  were  all  kinds  of 
lovely  blue  tones  about  her,  and  these  tones  in 
their  very  harmony  conspired  together  to  make 
I  76] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

the  blue  of  her  eyes  something  beyond  descrip- 
tion matchless  and  unforgettable.  She  was  one  of 
those  girls  who,  whether  they  put  on  a  pinafore  or 
a  Paquin  gown,  manage  to  make  mankind  believe 
two  things:  first,  that  they  are  more  beautiful 
than  ever,  and  next,  that  what  they  have  on  does 
not  look  too  expensive.  There  are  a  few  such 
girls  left,  I  am  told.  The  mere  sight  of  her 
smoothed  out  my  Bullwinkle  worries. 

She  came  to  the  point  at  once,  taking  advan- 
tage of  a  moment  when  her  cavalier's  manly  at- 
tention was  caught  by  the  workings  of  an  enlarg- 
ing machine  in  the  corner;  her  Jack  was  an  en- 
gineer, it  appeared.  She  paused  an  instant,  then 
plunged  in,  somewhat  breathlessly,  as  if  she  were 
not  quite  sure  of  her  ground. 

"Jack  and  I,"  she  said,  —  "well,  we  think  now 
that  perhaps  you  were  right  in  what  you  told  me 
a  year  ago.  Yes,  you  were  right!  I  was  mistaken 
when  I  thought  I  would  be  fully  satisfied  if  I 
could  have  forever  with  me  the  marble  copy  of 
mother's  hand,  carved  by  your  hand.  Travel  is  so 
broadening,  is  n't  it?  And  now,  since  I  've  seen  all 
Italy  and  France"  (here  she  smiled  widely  at  her 
own  fatuity),  "I've  learned  better,  indeed  I  have! 
And  if  you  don't  mind,  I'll  take  away  the  plaster 
[77  1 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

cast.  I  shall  want  to  keep  it  always,  of  course. 
But  it's  nature,  not  art,  that  makes  me  want  to." 

I  stood  aghast.  The  girl  was  actually  taking  me 
at  my  word,  and  repudiating  the  contract  of  yes- 
teryear. What  a  change  in  a  twelvemonth,  and, 
O  Education,  what  crimes  are  committed  in  thy 
name !  She  saw  me  looking  about  for  her  cast,  and 
very  gently  begged  me  not  to  bother,  unless  it  was 
quite  handy.  Resisting  an  ironic  impulse  to  tell 
her  that  of  course  a  plaster  cast  of  a  hand  was  al- 
ways more  or  less  handy,  I  dusted  off  her  con- 
founded box,  and  gave  it  to  her  with  what  cour- 
tesy I  could  muster.  I  remembered  Gigi's  saying 
that  to  do  otherwise  would  have  been  impossible, 
she  was  si  bella,  bella. 

It  chanced  that  not  six  feet  away  from  the 
lady  in  blue,  and  behind  a  little  curtain  adroitly 
arranged  by  Gigi,  the  marble  hand  was  enshrined. 
And  strange  as  it  will  seem  to  you  after  all  I  have 
said,  there  was  something  interesting  about  it, 
something  that  would  compel  your  pleased  at- 
tention, even  if  you  were  an  artist,  or  only  a  lover 
of  art.  Paul  Manship  liked  parts  of  it;  and  a 
painter  friend  of  mine  said  —  but  no  matter 
about  that  now.  Gigi  had  poured  his  whole  Med- 
iterranean soul  into  his  part  of  the  work,  and  I 
[  78] 


The  'Young  Lady  in  Blue 

had  designed,  as  best  I  could,  the  open  book  and 
the  drapery.  To  be  candid,  I  had  taken  real 
pleasure  in  finishing  the  marble,  with  the  desired 
morbidezza.  I  had  enjoyed  every  stroke  I  had 
given  to  that  most  beautiful  stone,  for  Gigi  had 
kept  my  tools  in  exquisite  condition  all  the  time. 
He  seemed  to  know  just  how  I  wanted  every  tool 
to  feel  in  my  hand  when  I  was  modelling  the 
marble.  I  longed  to  show  the  girl  what  we  had 
done  for  her.  But  how  could  I  do  that,  after  all  I 
had  said  to  her,  a  year  ago,  and  all  she  had  said  to 
me,  to-day?  Was  there  not  a  certain  sprightly 
finality  in  her  remarks?  With  decision,  she  took  the 
box  from  my  hands  and  entrusted  it  to  her  Jack. 

"Au  voir"  she  sang  to  me,  over  her  shoulder. 
"Au  plaisir  de  vous  voir!  But  I  shall  come  again, 
if  I  may.  Very  soon,  n'est-ce-pas?"  The  good 
Missouri  foundation  was  quite  evident  in  her 
farewell  address. 

Naturally,  I  was  nonplussed.  Think  of  it,  I,  a 
rising  —  yes,  you  might  say,  an  arrived  —  young 
sculptor,  in  Manhattan,  and  she,  a  chit  of  a  Chit- 
tenden  from  Missouri!  But  my  chagrin  was  as 
nothing  to  Gigi's.  For  of  course  I  had  not  meant 
to  pocket  that  money  myself,  just  for  a  few  hours' 
pleasant  work  on  a  bit  of  pink  marble.  I  was  in- 
[  79] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

tending  it  as  a  sort  of  well-earned  present  for 
Gigi,  who  has,  you  must  know,  a  rather  large 
flock  of  kids  to  be  shepherded  up  to  the  highest 
pastures  of  our  American  democracy.  There  was 
one  little  fellow  named  Mario,  the  most  gifted  of ' 
all,  and  he  had  been  hard  hit  by  infantile  paraly- 
sis; we  were  planning  to  use  this  money  for  his 
special  education  in  art.  And  now  the  chit  had 
left  us  planted  there,  with  nothing  but  a  raw 
n'est-ce-pas  for  our  pains.  It  served  me  right,  I 
admit.  But  what  of  Gigi,  and  the  lad  Mario? 
Why,  Mario  could  model  you  a  better  rabbit  out 
of  yesterday's  chewing-gum  than  Schneider  could 
ever  evolve  from  the  fairest  block  of  marble  in 
Milan  Cathedral.  That  girl  had  talked  of  elevat- 
ing American  art;  and  here  she  was,  actively 
stifling  American  genius.  I  could  not  meet  Gigi's 
eye.  Perhaps,  after  all,  there  was  no  great  con- 
trast between  the  young  lady  in  blue  and  the  Sen- 
ator, except  on  the  surface.  The  world  was  prob- 
ably full  of  chits  and  Bullwinkles. 

That  afternoon,  the  dreaded  sitting  began 
badly.  The  Senator  missed  my  wife  and  her  min- 
istrations. He  was  writing  his  memoirs,  and 
wanted  to  refresh  his  memory  about  his  third 
tariff  speech.  His  secretary  was  no  good  as  a 
[80] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

reader,  he  complained,  but  my  wife  had  seemed 
to  have  some  sense  about  her.  He  could  n't  under- 
stand why  a  woman  of  sense  should  want  to  go 
gallivanting.  His  manner  implied  that  it  was 
wholly  my  fault  that  my  wife  should  prefer  Bar 
Harbor  realities  to  Little  Rock  recollections. 
Half -peevishly  and  half -humorously,  he  writhed 
about  in  his  chair,  like  a  bad  little  boy  grown  old. 
He  did  not  like  the  cigar  he  had  brought,  and 
scorned  the  best  I  could  offer.  He  drove  me  to 
despair  by  presenting  square  front  view  when  I 
needed  to  verify  dewlaps  in  profile;  he  brushed  off 
imaginary  flies  from  his  Roman  nose,  just  as  if  my 
studying  his  nose  had  made  it  itch.  He  attempted 
every  grotesque  perversity  in  the  sitter's  calendar, 
and  even  invented  some  original  bedevilments  of 
his  own.  He  turned  his  attention  to  my  rendering 
of  the  details  of  his  attire,  telling  me  that  he  had 
always  tried  to  tie  his  tie  as  tight  as  he  could  get 
it,  and  that  if  I  did  n't  mind  (indeed,  I  did  mind!) 
he  wanted  to  have  that  third  button  of  his  waist- 
coat fastened  up,  if  the  dam'  thing  was  to  go  down 
to  posterity  in  imperishable  bronze.  Alas,  my 
sitter  was  eluding  me  again.  His  reality  as  a  hu- 
man being  was  hidden  from  me  in  a  fog  of  mo- 
mentary misconduct. 

[81  ] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

Suddenly  the  Senator  straightened.  He  was 
looking  toward  the  corner  where  a  stricken  Gigi 
was  still  hovering  about  out  rejected  collaborative 
masterpiece,  and  contemplating  the  wreck  of 
Mario's  future.  "Where  on  God's  footstool  did 
you  get  that  hand?"  shouted  the  Senator,  the 
big  W-shaped  vein  on  his  left  temple  swelling  in 
his  excitement. 

"  Gigi  and  I  made  it,"  I  replied,  calmly  accept- 
ing the  fact  that  either  the  Senator  or  I  had  at 
last  gone  crazy  under  the  strain  of  the  Bullwinkle 
bust.  The  man  had  never  before  shown  a  spark 
of  any  interest  whatsoever  in  my  works,  whether 
clay  or  plaster,  bronze  or  marble.  I  wondered 
whether  a  strait-jacket  would  have  been  a 
good  thing  to  include  in  my  studio  equipment, 
but  I  was  not  quite  sure  which  one  of  us  needed  it 
the  more,  so  bewildered  was  I  by  the  change  that 
had  seized  on  the  Senator.  He  bounded  from  his 
chair,  snatching  the  ground,  one  might  say,  from 
under  Gigi's  feet. 

"That  hand,"  bellowed  Mr.  Bullwinkle,  shak- 
ing his  forefinger  at  me  as  if  I  were  his  political 
opponent,  "that  hand  is  a  fine  thing!  I  tell  you, 
it's  a  great  thing!  It's  the  best  thing  you've  got 
in  your  whole  shooting-gallery,  and  don't  you 
[82] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

start  in  to  deny  it!  I  'd  rather  have  that  one  piece 
of  alabaster  marble  than  the  whole  of  Westmin- 
ster Abbey!" 

To  my  amazement,  the  Senator  stood  at  bay 
over  the  marble,  as  if  it  were  a  prize  to  be  de- 
fended against  all  comers.  He  fairly  flamed  with 
intensity.  I  never  saw  a  man  more  alive,  more 
tingling  with  a  sense  of  being  alive.  For  the  first 
time,  I  could  learn,  from  my  own  eyes  and  not 
from  historic  hearsay,  something  of  his  power 
over  his  fellow-men.  His  eyes  looked  large,  his 
jowls  turned  taut,  his  upstanding  hair,  which  I 
had  thought  almost  ridiculous,  became  sublime. 
He  seemed  a  creature  expressly  framed  for  the  ap- 
plause of  listening  senates.  In  a  twinkling,  and 
when  I  least  expected  it,  I  saw  more  of  the  real 
man  than  I  had  found  out  in  all  my  passionate 
searching  during  those  frustrate  sittings.  No 
doubt,  my  searching  had  helped  toward  my  pres- 
ent illuminated  vision;  that  vision  was  but  the 
culmination,  the  happy  ending,  of  my  quest. 
Like  Childe  Roland,  I  had  been  expecting  too 
much,  perhaps,  from  my  Dark  Tower.  What  a 
fool  I  had  been  to  suppose  that  the  Senator's 
germ  of  greatness  lay  in  some  noble  difference  be- 
tween himself  and  others!  Why,  it  was  plain  as 
[83  ] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

day  that  his  greatness  Jay,  not  in  his  difference 
from  the  rest  of  the  world,  oh,  no,  not  that;  his 
greatness  was  mainly  in  his  rich,  happy,  sympa- 
thetic commonness.  He  was  not  so  much  a  man 
above  men,  as  a  man  among  men.  My  mistake 
was,  I  had  been  trying  to  win  the  Senator;  I 
should  have  let  him  try  to  win  me,  according  to 
his  bent  and  usage.  So  I  sprang  back  to  my 
modelling,  and  let  him  be  himself.  It  did  not 
matter  to  me,  now,  that  he  was  striding,  gesticu- 
lating, quivering;  at  heart,  I  have  always  be- 
lieved, with  George  de  Forest  Brush,  that  a 
model  on  the  move,  and  really  alive,  is  far  better 
to  work  from  than  one  sitting  still  as  a  sod. 

And  now,  as  I  studied  my  man  anew,  I  per- 
ceived all  at  once  that  a  dozen  good  dominating 
strokes  rightly  placed  on  my  clay  could  turn  it 
from  a  mess  to  a  masterpiece.  I  became  two  per- 
sons, as  every  artist  at  times  must.  Each  was 
sharply  awake.  One  of  these  two  was  modelling 
for  dear  life  on  that  portrait,  smiting  the  thing 
now  here,  now  there ;  unhasting,  unresting ;  gath- 
ering up  rich  handfuls  of  all  the  released  indi- 
viduality of  greatness  that  I  now  saw  radiating 
from  a  transfigured  Senatorial  countenance,  and 
compressing  that  individuality  into  clay  for 
[84] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

the  plaster-moulder's  sacrifice  and  the  bronze- 
founder's  furnace.  The  other  man  in  me  was 
listening  amiably  to  a  Bullwinkle  speech  of  self- 
revelation.  I  suppose  that  under  my  skin  there 
was  even  a  third  person,  ironically  reminding  me 
that  it  was  never  my  hand  that  had  touched  the 
button  to  switch  all  this  new  light  on  a  stale 
matter.  It  was  another  hand,  a  lady's  hand,  a 
marble  hand,  too;  and  a  hand  rejected  by  a  chit. 
Such  reminders  drive  a  man  to  humility,  even 
while  he  is  winning  the  game.  For  I  was  winning; 
there  could  be  no  doubt  of  that,  now. 

"You  young  artist  fellers,"  the  Senator  was 
saying,  vehemently,  "of  course  you  all  think  of 
me  as  a  tough  old  politician.  So  I  am,  and  so  I 
want  to  be!  But  the  mistake  you  make  is,  think- 
ing I'm  nothing  else.  That  young  Mather  that 
painted  me  was  just  the  same.  He  made  a  swell 
portrait  of  me,  of  course,  red  plush  curtain  and 
all;  —  I  know  enough  not  to  deny  that.  But  he 
was  n't  so  much  interested  in  me  as  he  was  in  his 
way  of  painting  me.  And  it  shows  in  his  work, 
sticks  out  all  over!" 

I  took  to  heart  this  luminous  bit  of  art-criti- 
cism while  the  Senator  ran  on.  "And  I  can  tell 
you,  young  man,  that  this  hand  carries  me  back 
[85  ] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

in  a  way  you  don't  dream  of.  You  don't  even 
guess  at  the  sort  of  feeling  I  have  when  I  look  at 
it  and  touch  it!  You're  incapable  of  knowing! 
You're  not  old  enough  or  wise  enough  or  kind 
enough,  perhaps!  You're  too  college-sure  in  your 
own  way  of  feeling  to  care  a  continental  about 
what /feel!" 

I  could  not  help  seeing  that  some  strong  emo- 
tion had  visited  his  heart.  But  I  thought  he'd 
like  it  best  if  I  did  n't  say  much;  besides,  I  had 
my  work  to  do.  The  Bull  winkle  Building  must 
not  lack  its  crowning  touch  through  any  failure  of 
mine  to  seize  the  supreme  moment.  So  I  calmly 
swept  my  big  tool  alongside  of  the  Senator's  clay 
face,  half-erasing  a  thousand  fussy  unnecessary 
markings  from  its  map.  My  erstwhile  sitter  was 
still  hovering  excitedly  over  the  marble.  He  had 
nothing  whatever  to  say  about  morbidezza. 

"Look  here,"  he  exclaimed,  turning  upon  me 
with  a  gesture  of  real  dignity,  "you  probably 
don't  see,  or  imagine  you  see,  any  resemblance 
between  this  great  paw  of  mine  and  that  lovely 
lady's  hand!  No,  I  would  n't  expect  you  tol" 

Now  I  had  often  observed  that  the  Senator's 
hand  was  still  handsome  and  energetic.  An  un- 
usual hand,  I  had  thought,  for  a  politician.  It  was 
[86] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

uninvaded  either  by  chalky  deposit  on  the  knuck- 
les, or  fatty  increment  on  the  fingers,  or  even  by 
swollen  veins  on  the  back.  Hence  I  was  glad  to 
admit  the  likeness  he  saw;  and  weighing  my 
words,  while  I  laid  in  a  good  strong  dark  under  a 
resounding  lock  of  hair  he  had  just  tossed  up 
from  his  forehead,  I  congratulated  him  on  his 
artistic  discernment.  He  shook  off  the  compli- 
ment with  a  growl,  though  I  know  he  liked  it. 

"But  what  I  want  to  know  is,"  he  went  on, 
"how  the  deuce  did  you  happen  to  make  this 
lovely  thing?  Is  it  for  sale?  What  price,  f.o.b., 
young  feller,  what  price?  " 

Gigi  leaked  out  from  his  burlap.  I  could  feel 
his  eyes  imploring  me,  for  Mario's  sake,  to  play 
my  part  as  a  man ! 

The  Senator  noted  my  hesitation.  "  Is  n't  it  for 
sale?" 

"  Upon  my  word,"  I  replied,  intent  on  fixing  the 
Bullwinkle  nostril  for  posterity,  "I  hardly  know 
whether  it's  for  sale  or  not."  For  the  moment  I 
did  n't  care,  a  happy  issue  out  of  the  Bullwinkle 
bust  being  from  every  point  of  view  more  im- 
portant to  me,  just  then,  than  all  the  marble 
hands  from  here  to  Genoa. 

"With  the  good  help  of  Gigi  here,  I  made  the 
[87  ] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

thing  for  a  lady,  who  does  n't  seem  to  want  it, 
now  it's  done.  She's  been  to  Europe  since  she 
ordered  it,  and  she's  gotten  herself  educated,  so 
she  thinks,  to  higher  forms  of  art."  Perhaps  I 
spoke  a  trifle  bitterly. 

"What's  her  fool  name?"  The  Senator  was 
still  enkindled.  I  was  surprised  to  see  with  what 
tenderness  he  was  passing  his  fingers  over  the 
surface  of  that  marble;  —  and  he  shouting  the 
while  as  if  we  were  all  at  a  caucus! 

"Her  name?"  I  hesitated,  even  then  desiring 
to  protect  the  name  of  beauty,  and  to  pardon  the 
grotesque  shabbiness  of  that  girl's  act  in  taking  me 
at  my  word.  "Let's  see.  Oh,  it  was  a  Miss  Chit- 
tenden,  as  I  remember  it.  Just  a  chit  from  Mis- 
souri." 

"  Chittenden,"  returned  the  Senator,  with  a 
puzzled  air,  "Chittenden?"  Then  a  great  light 
broke  upon  him.  "Chittenden  nothing!  It's 
Clarenden,  that's  what  it  is.  And  if  she  told  you 
anything  else,  she 's  sailing  under  false  pretences. 
Just  like  her,  too!" 

"No,  indeed,"  I  interposed,  warmly,    "I'm 
sure  she  would  n't  do  that  —  there  must  be 
something  she'd  dravr  the  line  at.  Come  to  think 
of  it,  Clarenden  was  the  name  she  gave." 
[88] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

"A  long  young  dame,"  pursued  Bullwinkle, 
"blue  eyes,  you  know,  and  a  way  with  her? 
Mariellen  Clarenden?  " 

I  nodded.  The  Senator  leaped  in  triumph.  He 
turned  upon  me  with  the  friendliest  smile  in  the 
world.  "  What  were  you  charging  her?" 

"Four  hundred  dollars.  And  I  don't  sell  it  for 
a  cent  less  to  anybody." 

"Give  you  five  hundred!  Done!"  The  Senator 
snatched  a  checkbook  and  a  fountain  pen  from  the 
region  of  that  waistcoat  button  we  had  lately 
wrangled  over.  I  had  no  idea  his  motions  could 
be  so  swift  and  so  majestic.  Perhaps  I  might  have 
stayed  his  hand,  in  some  effete  idea  of  ethics,  01 
professional  etiquette;  but  Gigi's  inexorable  eye 
was  on  me,  dangling  Mario  before  my  hesitating 
soul.  I  compromised  by  taking  the  check,  with 
vague  thankfulness,  and  laying  it  on  the  table. 
I  told  myself  I  would  think  it  over.  It  might  be 
that  five  hundred  dollars  was  not  too  much  for  a 
masterwork,  preferred  above  all  Westminster 
Abbey. 

"You  wonder  at  me,"  the  Senator  went  on, 
with  a  guffaw  that  was  like  a  sob.  "  Well,  then, 
sit  up  and  wonder  all  you  like.  Sometimes  I  won- 
der at  myself.  This  hand  —  "  he  stroked  the 
[89] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

marble  with  the  same  sort  of  reverence  the  girl 
had  shown  about  that  plaster  cast.  "Oh,  hang  it, 
boy,  we're  all  human,  even  if  you  are  studio-bred- 
and-broke,  God  help  you,  and  I'm  from  Missouri! 
Listen,  kid.  I  had  a  sister,  a  twin  sister.  A  smart 
Aleck  like  you  would  probably  say  it  sounds  like 
opera-buff,  or  a  dime  novel,  but  it 's  just  plain 
fact,  right  out  of  my  own  life.  And  I  was  fonder 
of  that  girl  than  of  any  other  human  being  that 
ever  lived.  This  necktie  you  've  been  fussing  over 
because  it's  too  tight  and  hard,  you  said;  —  well, 
it's  black,  for  her.  And  black  is  tight  and  hard, 
sometimes.  Ah,  well!"  The  Senator  resolutely 
put  away  sadness,  and  again  stretched  out  his 
own  fine  capable  hand. 

"My  sister  had  the  prettiest  little  hand  in  the 
county.  County!  Her  hand  was  known  all  over 
the  State,  and  many  a  young  newspaper  feller 
touched  it  —  on  paper  —  in  the  old  days.  Foot, 
too!"  He  meditated  a  moment  on  his  own  very 
good-looking  shoes.  "After  she  married  Claren- 
den,  the  big  railroad  man,  we  saw  less  of  each 
other,  of  course,  but  we  were  chums  to  the  last. 
And  the  instant  my  eye  lit  on  this  lovely  work, 
this  masterpiece,  though  I  say  it  that  should  n't, 
I  knew  there  was  something  in  it  for  me!  I  did  n't 
[  90] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

quite  know  what,  of  course,  until  I  found  out  that 
Mariellen  was  mixed  up  in  it,  and  then  'twas 
clear  as  day.  Had  you  copy  a  plaster  cast,  did  n't 
she?  "  He  chuckled  with  pleasure  in  his  perspicac- 
ity. "We  Senators  know  all  about  plaster  casts 
and  death-masks  and  that  sort  of  thing.  Unless 
we  want  to  miss  a  trick,  we  have  'em  done  to  us, 
as  soon  as  the  time  comes.  But  what  I  don't 
understand  is  why  Mariellen  got  cold  feet!  She's 
a  girl  of  some  sense,  I  tell  you,  or  was,  until  she 
got  a  hankering  for  New  York,  and  what  she  calls 
the  higher  things  in  art ! " 

The  Senator's  last  words  mimicked  to  perfec- 
tion both  the  girl  and  myself.  It  was  that  kind  of 
mimicry  which  creates  good  understanding,  and 
leaves  a  smile,  not  a  sting.  Oh,  I  could  see  how  he, 
like  the  girl,  captivated  mankind! 

"Even  now,"  he  continued,  "she's  my  favorite 
of  the  whole  bunch,  and  they've  all  of  'em  got 
plenty  of  the  Bull  winkle  pep.  Some  face,  that 
girl,  hey?  Pretty  ain't  the  word!" 

No,  it  was  n't  the  word.  But  I  could  n't  give 
any  one  word  that  would  really  cover  the  case,  I 
admitted. 

"Mariellen  gets  the  better  of  everybody.  She 
even  puts  it  over  on  a  smart  artist  like  you.  I'd 
[91  ] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

like  to  take  her  across  my  knee!  And  before  I've 
finished  with  her,  I  shall  make  her  feel  like  thirty 
cents  about  this  job.  Gave  the  marble  heart  to 
my  marble  hand,  did  she?  She'll  be  wishing  she 
kept  it,  the  moment  she  sees  I've  got  it.  But 
mark  my  words,  it'll  never  be  hers,  until  after 
I've  taken  the  Big  Subway  for  good  and  for  all. 
And  if  she  tries  to  bamboozle  me  out  of  what  I  've 
bought  and  paid  for,  I  '11  — " 

A  peal  of  the  bell  and  voices  in  the  anteroom 
caused  the  speaker  to  suspend  sentence,  and  I 
slipped  out  to  find,  in  eager  converse  with  Gigi, 
the  young  person  from  Missouri.  Was  the  sky 
raining  coincidences,  that  day?  With  a  gesture 
absurdly  like  her  uncle's,  she  was  drawing  from 
that  much-embroidered  handbag  of  hers  a  check- 
book not  unlike  his  own  in  general  effect.  Had 
Shakespeare  been  there,  he  would  have  indited  a 
sonnet  to  the  checkbook  of  beauty,  and  its  like- 
ness to  that  of  brains  and  power. 

"Of  course,"  said  the  young  lady,  giving  me  at 
once  her  charming  smile  and  her  signed  check, 
"I  knew  that  you  knew,  from  what  I  said  when  I 
went  away  from  here  this  morning,  that  I  meant 
to  come  back  just  as  soon  as  I  could,  to  deliver 
the  goods,  and  to  get  the  goods."  What  I  had 
[92] 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

seen  of  her  uncle  helped  me  to  recognize  a  genu- 
ine emotion  hiding  behind  the  flippancy  of  her 
words.  I  freely  confess  that  if  my  wife  or  my 
sister  had  said  or  done  just  what  Miss  Clarenden 
did,  I  would  have  found  it  preposterous,  alarming, 
in  bad  taste.  But  that  girl  had  some  strange 
power  to  make  one  see  at  once  that  what  she  did 
was  simple  and  natural;  the  best  thing  in  the  cir- 
cumstances, and  therefore  not  foolish  or  ill-bred. 

"I  know  you'll  understand,  the  moment  I  ex- 
plain: I've  always  said  to  myself  that  the  man 
who  carved  that  Dancer  would  understand  a  lot. 
Well,  when  1  came  here  this  morning,  I  simply 
could  n't  shake  Jack.  He  stuck  to  my  skirts  like 
a  burr.  You  know  we're  to  be  married  in  the 
autumn."  The  pink  roses  in  her  cheeks  flamed 
into  American  Beauties  for  an  instant,  and  then 
became  themselves  again,  in  a  way  that  I  've  often 
wished  might  be  managed  on  the  stage. 

"Jack  has  nothing  in  the  world  but  what  he 
earns.  To  be  sure,  he  earns  a  lot,  being  —  no,  no, 
not  a  plumber,  but  a  very,  very  civil  engineer." 
Her  time-worn  jests  seemed  dewy-fresh  as  they 
fell  from  her  lips.  Witt)'  as  well  as  beautiful,  I 
thought.  Oh,  I  admit  my  weakness! 

Miss  Clarenden  continued  her  explanation. 
[93  1 


The  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

"Very  likely,  though,  we  shall  have  to  economize, 
at  first.  And  I  did  n't  want  Jack  to  see  me  spend 
four  hundred  dollars  right  off  bang,  the  very  day 
after  we  landed,  even  for  something  I  long  for  as 
I  do  for  that  marble  hand;  real  art,  too.  You  see, 
Jack  got  awfully  gloomy  over  that  last  dozen 
pairs  of  gloves  I  got  at  the  Bon  Marche,  the  day 
before  we  sailed.  Said  he  feared  that  at  first  he 
could  n't  give  me  all  I  'd  been  accustomed  to, 
and  so  on.  And,  honestly,  I  was  afraid  that  he  'd 
be  doing  a  bit  of  mental  arithmetic  right  here  in 
your  studio,  and  doing  it  wrong!  Saying  to  him- 
self that  if  twenty-four  kid  gloves  cost  a  hundred 
francs,  why  should  one  marble  hand  cost  so  many 
hundred  dollars,  or  something  like  that!"  I  saw 
that  the  tears  were  very  near  those  laughing  eyes 
of  hers,  but  she  went  bravely  on.  "Jack  does  n't 
know  much  about  art  yet,  but  I  'm  going  to  ex- 
plain it  all  to  him,  the  morbidezza  and  everything. 
And  I  'm  just  crazy  to  see  what  you  've  done  for 
me." 

Her  voice  with  its  smiles  and  tears  floated  in  to 
Senator  Bullwinkle  as  I  led  her  toward  the  work 
of  her  hope.  The  marble  was  fairly  heavy,  but 
the  Senator  was  more  than  fairly  strong,  and  in 
my  absence,  he  had  gathered  it  up  between  his 
[94] 


Tloe  Young  Lady  in  Blue 

hands,  and  had  sat  down  to  muse  upon  it.  In 
fact,  it  lay  across  his  knees,  just  where  he  had 
said  he  would  like  to  take  Mariellen.  I  don't 
know  how,  but  he  presently  succeeded  in  making 
a  place  for  both.  I  think  Mariellen  helped  him. 

Of  course  it  was  the  Senator  who  kept  the  mas- 
terpiece, the  buccaneer  in  him  prizing  it  all  the 
more  when  he  learned  from  a  grateful  Gigi  the 
origin  of  the  raw  material.  He  tells  me  he  does  n't 
care  a  whoop  whether  the  work  elevates  American 
art  or  not;  it  elevates  him.  Mariellen  admits  it's 
better  so,  since  the  lad  Mario  is  the  gainer  by  the 
one  hundred  dollars  with  which  the  Senator  had 
built  up  the  price.  To  clinch  the  matter,  she 
wanted,  for  Mario's  sake,  to  add  her  own  check 
to  her  uncle's,  her  very  first  glance  at  that  boy's 
amazing  sculpture  in  various  lowly  substances 
having  convinced  her  of  the  wisdom  of  such  a 
step.  But  I  prevailed  upon  her  to  wait  a  year,  at 
least;  and  that  part  does  not  come  into  this  tale, 
at  all. 

"Ah,  well,  there  are  more  ways  than  one  to 
elevate  art,  or  anything  else.  It's  up  to  Mario, 
now,"  blithely  remarked  the  young  lady  in  blue. 


"C'EST  UNE  TAUPE" 

I  FEEL  sure  that  everybody,  at  least  every- 
body who  is  anybody,  really  knows,  in  the 
bottom  of  his  heart,  just  what  a  taupe  is.  But  in 
case  there  should  be  any  person  with  such  weighty 
world  affairs  on  his  mind  that  he  could  not  possi- 
bly move  them  around  to  discover  hidden  among 
them  an  insignificant  matter  like  a  taupe,  I  will 
say  that  a  taupe  is  a  small  furry  thing  that  bur- 
rows in  the  ground.  By  no  means  an  unfashion- 
able creature,  I  assure  you!  Its  color  is  always 
modish.  Its  skins,  when  collected  by  hundreds 
and  thousands,  go  to  make  up  what  I  am  informed 
are  "among  the  most  authoritative  fur  garments 
of  the  coming  season."  In  short,  a  taupe  is  a  mole, 
all  told. 

Also,  I  am  reasonably  certain  that  most  of  us, 
if  we  should  stop  to  consider  the  subject,  would 
understand  perfectly  the  nature  of  a  limace.  A 
slimy,  limy  limace!  Its  very  name  tells  its  story. 
It  is  not  exactly  one  of  the  "slithy  toves"  of  the 
old  song,  but  they  may  all  have  had  similar  ances- 
tors. And  if  you  have  guessed  that  a  limace  is  a 
[96] 


C'est  une  Taupe 

slug,  poor  thing,  —  a  big  slug,  no  more  and  no 
less,  —  you  are  entirely  right.  So  there  you  have 
the  two  characters,  the  mole,  the  slug;  the  furry, 
fashionable  taupe,  the  slippery  yet  sticky  limace. 
In  the  Bois  de  Meudon,  on  the  most  beautiful 
summer  morning  in  the  world,  a  limace  was  lying 
curled  up  like  a  thick  brown  half-moon  on  a  bright 
green  leaf.  In  its  sluggish  way,  it  was  coquetting 
with  the  sunbeams.  The  limace  was  in  love  with 
life,  and  at  peace  with  all  the  earth.  So  were  the 
little  Parisians  who  had  come  out  from  the  city 
to  make  holiday.  At  first  there  were  not  many  of 
them;  only  M.  Petitpot,  the  kind,  red-eyed  mason 
of  the  rue  Delambre;  Mme.  Petitpot  with  the 
baby,  in  his  straw  hat  built  like  a  life-preserver; 
the  good  grandmother,  not  ashamed  of  her  white 
cap;  and  the  boy  Pierre  Petitpot,  in  his  newest 
black  apron.  There  were  also  the  two  doubly- 
opening  baskets  for  the  luncheon.  M.  Petitpot 
himself  carried  the  basket  that  had  the  bread  and 
the  salad,  with  the  two  bottles  of  red  wine  slanted 
in,  one  at  each  end.  But  the  grandmother  kept 
fast  hold  of  the  smaller  basket,  because  that  one 
contained  a  truly  magnificent  roasted  chicken, 
wrapped  in  a  napkin.  What  an  aroma,  my  friends  1 
A  dejeuner  sur  I'herbe  was  contemplated.  Messrs. 
[  97  ] 


C'est  une  Taupe 

Manet  and  Monet  are  not  the  only  artists  of  the 
dejeuner  sur  I'herbe. 

Presently  other  Parisians  came,  from  various 
quarters  of  the  city,  and  from  various  businesses. 
All  were  seeking  a  little  Sunday  happiness  in  the 
open.  They  were  not  really  familiar  with  the 
secrets  of  the  wood,  as  you  shall  see.  But  they 
had  curiosity  and  discernment,  and  these  two, 
keeping  together,  will  go  far  toward  finding  knowl- 
edge. Unlike  English  people,  these  French  per- 
sons chatted  with  each  other,  without  mistrust. 
Also,  they  revealed  the  beauties  of  nature  to  each 
other.  How  dazzling  and  glorious  were  the  clouds 
that  day!  The  grocer's  lady  pointed  out  to  Mme. 
Petitpot  that  the  good  God  must  surely  possess  a 
giant  egg-whip,  to  be  able  to  produce  a  meringue 
as  colossal  and  light  as  those  masses  of  cloud 
over  there!  And  Mme.  Petitpot  had  replied  that 
eggs  were  better  and  cheaper,  now  that  it  was 
June,  but  that  her  own  egg-beater  had  a  kink  in  it, 
so  that  she  was  about  to  buy  another. 

Black-aproned  Pierre  was  a  pale  bright-eyed 
child  with  a  bulging  forehead,  and  hands  that 
looked  as  if  they  wanted  to  play  the  piano  or 
something.  Easy  to  see  that  he  was  predestined 
for  the  paths  of  learning.  Per  aspera  ad  astra;  the 
[98] 


C'est  une  Taupe 

latter  for  Pierre,  the  former  for  his  parents.  Even 
for  this  one  holiday,  they  had  not  been  able  to 
separate  him  from  his  new  "Petit  Atlas  du 
Monde";  he  hugged  it  so  tightly  that  the  crim- 
son cover  had  already  stained  his  hands,  freshly 
washed  that  very  morning.  His  delighted  glance 
skipped  like  a  bird  from  tree  to  bush.  He  nodded 
his  head  in  smiling  ecstasy  when  the  grocer's  lady 
expressed  that  airy  fantasy  of  hers  as  to  the  clouds. 

But  it  was  one  of  the  later  comers,  a  pink- 
sashed  little  girl  from  the  Montrouge  quarter, 
who  first  saw  the  limace,  and  shouted  aloud  in 
joyous  fright.  "  What  a  droll  of  a  beast!  1  beg  of 
thee,  Mamma,  regard  me  that!" 

All  the  world  pressed  forward  to  inspect  the 
limace.  There  were  some  who  even  had  the  har- 
dihood to  touch  the  creature  with  little  sticks. 
"Hold,  hold,  my  infant!  Faut  pas  la  toucher/ 
Perhaps  it  is  a  poisonous  one,  hein?  Demand  of 
thy  papa  whether  it  is  envenomed." 

By  now,  quite  a  little  crowd  had  gathered.  One 
would  say,  amateurs  in  limaqonneriel  Papa,  not 
knowing  in  the  least  whether  it  was  envenomed 
or  otherwise,  preferred  not  to  make  any  statement 
before  the  other  Parisians,  who,  if  the  truth  were 
discovered,  were  no  better  informed  than  he  him- 
[99  1 


C'est  une  Taupe 

self  as  to  the  nature  of  the  thing  there.  Strange 
as  it  may  seem,  those  Parisians  were  really  less 
wise  about  the  limace  than  you  and  I  are,  to-day! 
For  not  one  of  them  really  knew  that  all  of  them 
were  looking  at  a  limace.  But  they  one  and  all 
wanted  to  talk  about  it,  solo,  fugue,  and  chorus; 
and  they  did  not  know  how  best  to  mention  it. 
Now  it  is  absurd  to  keep  on  calling  a  thing  la 
chose.  So  at  last  some  one  asked  aloud,  as  all  had 
been  asking  within,  "What  is  it  that  that  is,  that 
that?" 

Ah,  if  only  M.  J.  Henri  Fabre  had  been  there, 
M.  Fabre,  the  "insects'  Homer"!  But  M.  Fabre 
was  far  away,  and  no  one  answered  for  him. 
There  was  a  pause.  Parisians  hate  a  pause.  The 
day  had  begun  so  joyous,  and  there  they  all 
were,  pausing.  Insupportable!  A  pretty  lady 
with  a  primrose-colored  parasol  said  that  if  it 
were  a  serpent,  now,  she  would  be  able  to  tell  you. 
She  felt  herself  something  of  a  connoisseur  in  ser- 
pents; there  had  been  a  serpent  at  the  last  pique- 
nique  she  had  attended.  The  gentleman  on  whose 
arm  she  was  leaning  said,  with  emotion,  "Ah,  I 
can  well  believe  that,  Mademoiselle!"  Then 
everybody  laughed  a  merry  "He,  he!"  But  all 
this  graceful  badinage  brought  them  no  nearer  to 
[  ioo  1 


C'est  une  Taupe 

knowledge.  Hence  those  who  really  thirsted  for 
knowledge  were  glad  when  the  white-capped 
grandmother  Petitpot,  with  proud  beady  eyes, 
pushed  forward  pale  little  Pierre  with  his  bulging 
forehead.  In  fine,  our  Pierre,  a  child  well  in- 
structed, could  inform  those  ladies. 

Appalling  yet  entrancing  moment  for  black- 
aproned  Pierre!  He  clasped  his  thin  little  Atlas 
of  the  World  against  his  stomach,  and  silently 
prayed  for  knowledge  to  descend  upon  him  from 
on  high.  Then  he  looked  earnestly  down  on  the 
limace,  to  put  himself  en  rapport  with  the  creature 
in  her  underworld  life. 

A  touch  of  rose  pink  bloomed  a  moment  on  his 
sallow  cheek.  "I  think,"  he  said,  in  his  eager 
fluty  voice  of  a  born  "teacher's  favorite,"  "I 
think,  yes,  I  believe  well!  —  C'est  une  taupe"  The 
very  utterance  of  his  faith  created  in  him  a  faith 
more  abundant.  He  nodded  his  head  sagely, 
even  boldly.  "Ah,  oui,  Madame,  sans  doute,  c'est 
une  taupe" 

Swiftly  the  words  of  the  young  scholar  pene- 
trated all  the  little  groups  of  Parisians.  Une 
taupe!  Lady  and  gentleman,  girl  and  boy,  mason 
and  grocer,  one  after  the  other  took  up  that 
goodly  revelation.  "C'est  une  taupe!"  Some  re- 


C'est  une  Taupe 

peated  it  a  little  sadly,  as  if  it  were  a  mistake,  or 
at  least  an  indelicacy,  on  the  part  of  the  taupe  not 
to  have  been  something  else.  Others  repeated  it 
with  exquisite  gayety,  as  if  a  taupe  were  the  one 
object  of  joy  the  world  had  waited  for,  until  then. 
Still  others  repeated  it  without  passion  and  with- 
out surprise,  as  if  a  taupe  were  no  more  than 
should  have  been  expected  at  such  a  time.  But  in 
one  way  or  another,  they  all  repeated  it.  C'est  une 
taupe.  Even  those  who  had  never  had  so  much  as 
a  cornerwise  glance  at  the  limace  went  their  ways, 
saying,  with  a  fine  discriminating  wave  of  the 
hand,  "une  taupe."  Indeed,  not  having  seen  the 
limace,  they  were  naturally  far  more  confident 
than  those  who  had  really  gone  quite  near  to  that 
brown  half-moon  on  the  green  leaf,  and  touched 
it  with  twigs.  The  distribution  of  knowledge  is  a 
moving  spectacle,  is  it  not? 

My  friend  who  was  beside  me  in  that  lovely 
wood,  with  the  blue  sky  above  the  waving 
branches,  and  with  the  flower-like  children  spring- 
ing up  from  the  grass,  and  the  autumn-leaf  grand- 
mothers walking  abroad  with  baskets  for  the 
dejeuner,  suddenly  asked  me  why  I  was  laughing 
like  that,  and  the  tears  running  down  my  cheeks. 

"You  do  not  know  why!"  I  answered.   "Oh, 

I    102    ] 


C'est  une  Taupe 

surely  if  you  know  anything  at  all,  you  must 
know !  It  is  because  I  can  see,  at  this  moment,  this 
same  spectacle  shaping  itself  everywhere  on  our 
planet;  yes,  from  the  Arctic  to  the  Antarctic, 
on  Capricornus  and  on  Cancer,  and  even  in  the 
Equatorial  belt  where  the  lazy  peoples  live. 
Everywhere,  everywhere  on  this  round  globe  of 
ours,  there  is  a  poor  limace  among  the  green 
leaves,  and  no  one  knows  what  she  is;  but  every- 
where there  is  a  good  old  grandmother,  pushing 
forward  a  pale  little  Pierre  with  a  bay-window 
brow,  to  tell  the  world, '  C  'est  une  taupe.'  And  the 
world  listens,  and  repeats,  and  so  becomes  wise." 
My  friend,  a  sadly  literal  person,  objected.  It 
could  n't  be  like  that,  among  the  Esquimaux,  in 
their  igloos.  And  I  had  all  I  could  do  to  prove 
that  among  the  Esquimaux,  in  their  igloos,  it  was 
not  only  just  like  that,  but  more  so.  On  the  re- 
turn boat  for  Paris,  we  were  still  arguing  the  ques- 
tion. The  beady-eyed  little  grandmother  had  al- 
ready helped  to  remove  the  life-preserving  hat 
from  the  Petitpot  baby.  She  continued  to  guard 
her  basket,  which  now  held  only  an  aroma,  and, 
please  God,  the  carcasse  for  the  morrow's  soup. 
Black-aproned  Pierre,  with  an  unrelenting  grip 
upon  his  Atlas  of  the  World,  laid  his  sleepy, 
[  103  ] 


C'est  une  Taupe 

knowledge-burdened  head  against  her  shoulder. 
Mme.  Petitpot  whispered  over  that  head  into  the 
grandmother's  ear,  and  the  grandmother  nodded 
and  smiled.  The  two  were  agreed  that  it  was 
truly  a  miracle;  in  all  that  fine  company,  the  boy 
was  the  only  one  who  knew.  Surely  there  was  a 
future  for  this  child,  already  so  well  instructed! 
And  with  what  agreeable  courtesy  he  had  said  it, 
"Madame,  C'est  une  taupe!" 

The  women  smiled,  yet  there  was  something 
sad  and  lofty  in  their  smiling.  For  they  knew 
that  they  were  guarding  between  them  a  very 
precious  vessel,  and  they  prayed  for  strength 
equal  to  the  honored  task.  The  evening  breeze 
freshened  sweetly;  and  in  case  that  fabled  Gallic 
monster,  a  courant  d'air,  might  come  stalking 
through  the  boat,  the  grandmother  spread  a  fold 
of  her  voluminous  black  skirt  over  Pierre's  bare 
knees. 


THEIR  APPOINTED  ROUNDS 

I 

THEY  were  destined  to  dislike  each  other  on 
sight,  those  two  whose  appointed  rounds, 
unexpectedly  interlacing,  had  brought  them  to- 
gether under  the  ancient  pines  keeping  watch 
over  the  grave  of  a  Revolutionary  soldier.  The 
man  disliked  the  boy,  because  he  himself  had  at 
that  moment  a  loathing  and  a  horror  of  himself 
and  his  probable  fate,  and  the  lad's  pliant  figure 
vividly  recalled  to  him  what  his  own  had  been, 
in  days  long  past.  The  boy's  reason  for  disliking 
the  man  was  far  more  obscure,  but  no  less  potent. 
That  little  pine-clad  hill  with  the  graves  was 
pleasantly  sheltered  by  hills  higher  than  itself. 
The  pines  were  very  tall  and  shapely.  They 
soared  skyward  like  clustering  brown  masts, 
decked  out  at  their  far  tops  with  tossing  banners 
of  holiday  green.  The  summer  sunlight  paid  long 
visits  at  their  feet.  If  you  should  lay  down  your 
head  under  those  trees,  and  then  lift  your  eyes, 
you  would  be  startled  to  discover  the  unbelievable 
[  105  1 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

purple  pomp  of  those  woven  branches,  and  the 
intense  blueness  beyond.  The  shadows  on  the 
ground  were  more  golden  there  than  elsewhere, 
the  sunbeams  more  serious-minded.  They  had  all 
played  together  there  for  so  many  years,  seeing 
the  same  sights  and  thinking  the  same  thoughts, 
that  they  had  at  last  come  to  look  somewhat  like 
each  other.  L'Allegro  and  II  Penseroso  had 
mingled  their  identities.  A  scarlet  tanager  flared 
down  from  a  far  purple  bough,  to  sing  the  peace 
that  brooded  over  the  place.  Both  the  man  and 
the  boy  had  their  reasons  for  seeking  peace. 
Though  unknown  to  each  other,  they  knew  that 
peace  might  be  found  under  those  pines,  but  they 
had  no  mind  for  sharing  it  with  each  other. 

II 

THE  boy  Royal  had  a  poem  of  his  own  make 
in  his  pocket,  and  being  on  his  travels,  he  had 
climbed  up  from  the  east  to  rest  himself,  and  to 
re-read  his  verses  yet  again  in  solitude.  Perhaps 
he  was  about  to  add  to  them  some  touch  of  im- 
mortality, some  wistful  trace  of  that  philosophy 
which  may  not  revisit  the  mind  of  man  after  his 
seventeenth  year,  but  day  by  day  loses  itself 
more  deeply  in  the  underbrush  of  uncharted, 
[  106] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

enchanted  woodways.  The  poem  was  about  a 
maiden  called  Amaryllis.  In  the  prose  of  private 
life,  Royal's  Amaryllis  was  a  wholly  good  and 
pretty  girl  a  little  older  than  himself.  Her  name 
was  Mary,  but  even  at  nineteen  she  was  still 
signing  herself  Maimee.  However,  what  is  poetry 
for,  unless  to  quicken  and  rechristen  all  worlds 
into  strangeness  and  beauty?  Let  Royal  keep  his 
Amaryllis  a  while  longer,  I  beg! 

Is  there  any  good  and  comfortable  thing  that 
the  heart  of  youth  will  not  flee  from,  in  its  longing 
for  the  untrodden  way?  The  boy  Royal  was  a  fugi- 
tive from  the  eggs-and-bacon  type  of  breakfast. 
He  was  in  search  of  some  ambrosial,  sit-by-the- 
brookside  food  more  precious  and  sustaining  to 
his  spirit,  so  he  dreamed,  than  any  of  the  comesti- 
bles, fine  or  gross,  involving  his  parents  in  worri- 
some monthly  bills  at  the  grocer's.  For  him,  life 
and  letters  were  mingled  mysteriously  in  the  same 
sparkling  cup,  and  he  wanted  to  drink  of  that  cup 
freely.  One  can  do  such  things  better  away  from 
home.  He  had  therefore  wrung  from  his  mother, 
his  father  being  absent  in  the  city,  working  for 
the  wherewithal,  her  unwilling  consent  to  a  soli- 
tary three  days'  walking  tour,  his  entire  luggage  to 
consist  of  a  flashlight,  the  Iliad,  and  a  toothbrush. 
[  107  ]  ' 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

Oh,  of  course,  a  full  tin  of  provender  slung  across 
the  back  of  his  Norfolk  jacket !  You  will  doubtless 
understand  what  his  twin  brother  Peter  meant 
when  he  said  that  the  difference  between  Royal's 
travels  and  R.  L.  S.'s  was  all  in  one  word;  a  prep- 
osition, don't  they  call  it?  Stevenson's  Travels 
were  With  a  Donkey,  Royal's  were  Of  a  Donkey. 
Peter  was  sore  because  he  had  not  been  invited  to 
be  a  donkey  too. 

The  twins  loved  one  another  dearly,  but  now 
that  adolescence  was  upon  them,  they  often 
wounded  one  another  sorely.  Each  boy,  recogniz- 
ing certain  superiorities  in  the  other,  felt  all  the 
more  bound  to  rescue  and  protect  and  assert  his 
own  individuality.  Who  knows  what  dire  harm 
to  ourselves  may  issue  from  our  brother's  excel- 
lences? And  Royal,  even  more  than  Peter,  longed 
for  a  more  emphatic  identity  of  his  own  —  some- 
thing so  distinct  and  compelling  that  the  world 
would  forever  cease  contrasting  and  comparing 
him  with  another. 

Their  father  was  a  painter,  their  mother  a 
writer.  Peter  took  to  colors,  Royal  to  ink.  But 
Peter,  luckily  for  the  world,  was  no  such  born-in- 
the-blood  Romantic  as  poor  Royal  then  was,  and 
might  forever  be,  unless  something  could  be  done 
[  108] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

about  it!  That  boy's  parents  had  showered  upon 
him  all  the  benefits  of  education,  dentistry,  oper- 
ations for  adenoids.  They  had  even  had  him  psy- 
cho-analyzed, since  Uncle  Tom's  business  in  life 
was  exactly  that.  My  uncle  the  psychiatrist;  the 
boys  often  stuck  the  phrase  into  their  cheeks,  for 
the  benefit  of  their  mates.  The  work  on  Royal 
had  been  done  with  the  utmost  secrecy,  of  course. 
Uncle  Tom  had  made  a  mental  diagram  of  Royal's 
case,  as  carefully  as  for  a  paying  patient.  In 
seven  closely  typewritten  pages,  bristling  with 
words  like  prognosis,  adolescence,  stimuli,  adapt- 
ability, environment,  Royal's  young  soul-history 
may  still  be  found  among  Uncle  Tom's  files.  And1 
Uncle  Tom  would  be  the  first  to  tell  you  that  for 
the  unlearned,  those  seven  pages  might  be  summed 
up  in  seven  words:  a  poet  is  growing,  let  him 
alone.  Royal's  parents  were  cheered  by  that  re- 
port. They  had  always  rejoiced  in  the  harmoni- 
ous understanding  that  existed  between  the  uncle 
and  nephew.  There  was  a  strong  family  likeness 
between  the  two;  they  turned  their  heads  to  the 
same  side  when  arguing,  and  waved  a  good-bye  in 
the  same  manner.  Often  Royal  at  his  most  poet- 
ical made  observations  that  staggered  Uncle  Tom 
at  his  most  psychological.  Uncle  Torn  sometimes 
[  109  ] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

found  it  ludicrous  when,  simply  because  "maxi- 
ma debetur  puero  reverentia"  he  had  refrained  from 
saying  something,  and  then  found  that  Royal,  with 
immense  earnestness,  was  saying  it  himself. 

Royal  was  a  lean,  rangy,  bright-haired  lad, 
with  a  clear  skin  and  a  good  carriage.  He  had 
nobly-set  blue  eyes  whose  depths  seemed  practi- 
cally bottomless,  the  young  eyes  that  suggest  both 
heaven  and  hell.  He  had  also  a  determined  chin 
that  often  pushed  him  into  positions  in  which  his 
undetermined  nose  was  of  no  use  whatever.  Oh, 
quite  the  ordinary  type  of  boy  whose  unusualness 
is  chiefly  within!  Perhaps  the  most  striking 
thing  about  him,  thus  far,  was  his  passion  for 
beauty;  beauty  to  be  seen,  heard,  tasted,  clasped, 
protected,  prayed  to.  There  was  Scotch  blood  in 
him;  he  had  plenty  of  second  sight,  but  was  often 
found  lacking  in  that  vulgar  variety  of  first  sight 
known  as  common  sense. 

In  planning  his  travels,  he  had  seen  himself, 
now  as  a  sailor  in  tarry  trousers,  jingling  strange 
coins  in  foreign  ports  that  reeked  with  incredible 
oaths  and  aromas;  now  as  a  gifted  young  scholar, 
teaching  French  to  some  sturdy  blacksmith's 
fair  daughters,  in  exchange  for  a  noggin  of  milk 
and  a  brace  of  doughnuts,  since  you  can't  expect 
[  no] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

cakes  and  ale  in  this  country;  and  now  as  a  prince- 
in-disguise  mechanic  out  of  work,  in  smutched 
overalls,  with  nothing  clean  at  all  about  him  but 
his  teeth;  his  toothbrush  would  tell  the  world. 
Royal  recognized  the  weakness  of  his  own  fables. 
He  knew  well  enough  that,  unlike  practical  Peter 
he  himself  could  scarcely  tell  a  bolt  from  a  bit- 
stock,  or  a  belaying-pin  from  a  bo's'n's  whistle; 
and  also  (here  Peter  would  be  no  better  off)  that 
he  would  certainly  be  unable  to  explain  away  the 
French  subjunctive,  in  case  the  prettier  of  the 
blacksmith's  daughters  should  show  an  unfortu- 
nate curiosity  about  a  topic  so  repugnant.  Yes, 
Royal  was  a  stern  critic  of  his  own  castles,  and 
therefore  spent  much  time  in  rebuilding  them. 

Royal  on  his  travels  soon  found  that  three  days 
were  all  too  brief  a  term  for  such  adventures  as  he 
sought.  His  mother  and  he  had  been  reading  the 
"Crock  of  Gold"  together,  and  he  knew  that  she 
would  understand  him  when  he  wrote,  on  the 
second  day  of  his  faring: 

"Dear  Mother,  I  am  with  the  leprecauns,  and 
so  shall  not  return  as  early  as  we  said.  Fear  not, 
all  is  well  with  me.  The  world  is  wide,  the  weather 
fine,  and  the  extra  $3.75  you  gave  me  is  hardly 
touched  as  yet.  Besides,  I  can  earn  what  I  need, 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

if  I  need  more  than  I  have.  I  love  the  feel  of  this 
life  in  the  open,  and  you  know  how  much  I  want 
to  spin  the  wheel  of  life,  in  my  own  philosopher 
fashion." 

Thus  wrote  Royal,  giving  neither  date  nor  ad- 
dress, and  incontinently  planning  to  reach  far 
cities  by  means  of  gondola  cars.  His  mother  was 
hurt,  irritated,  and  anxious,  in  equal  parts;  but 
she  understood  her  boy  well  enough  to  know  that 
there  was  some  fabric  to  his  fustian.  Uncle  Tom 
jeered  openly,  saying  that  people  who  breakfast 
with  the  leprecauns  may  have  to  sup  with  the 
lepers,  if  they  don't  watch  out.  These  psychia- 
trists have  a  way  of  taking  the  worm's-eye  view 
of  high  doings. 

Ill 

WITHIN  a  week,  the  Royal  progress  had  swept 
through  parts  of  three  of  our  United  States, 
without  serious  damage  either  to  the  lad  or  to  the 
landscape.  The  curve  of  operations  was  now  fast 
shaping  itself  into  a  circle.  Day  and  night,  the 
weather  had  been  magically  lovely.  Royal  had 
gladly  passed  the  first  three  nights  a  la  belle  etoile; 
with  keen  relish,  he  rolled  the  phrase  under  his 
tongue,  thinking  that  now  not  a  boy  in  Froggy 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

Beaurivage's  French  Literature  classes  under- 
stood its  charm  as  well  as  he.  His  Norfolk  coat,  a 
bore  by  day,  proved  a  godsend  in  the  chill  hours 
before  dawn,  and  he  knew  the  use  of  a  Sunday 
paper  as  a  mattress.  Before  falling  asleep,  he 
would  gaze  with  delight  into  the  skies;  thrilled 
with  their  beauty  and  immensity,  he  would  say 
to  himself,  "After  this,  I  am  changed  forever;  I 
shall  always  be  something  more  than  I  was  before 
I  came  here."  No  doubt  he  was  right. 

And  his  days  were  no  less  wondrous,  for  their 
sun,  and  shade,  and  good  going.  Sometimes, 
when  he  was  beginning  to  feel  dusty  or  weary,  an 
unexpected  pool  would  signal  to  him  from  beside 
a  shaded  road;  and  when  he  came  up  from  it,  he 
was  a  new-made  creature.  He  liked  being  solitary, 
yet  he  liked  stopping  at  sudden  inns  for  frugal 
meals,  and  he  liked  chatting  with  the  wayfarers 
he  met.  The  latter  half  of  the  week  had  moments 
less  idyllic.  His  fourth  night  he  spent  in  a  box  car, 
his  fifth  in  a  boarding-house  for  Polish  immigrants, 
and  his  sixth,  in  part  at  least,  in  the  jail-room  of  a 
village  town-hall,  where  he  had  been  held  in  cus- 
tody on  a  false  charge  of  having  stolen  an  automo- 
bile. 

His  code  was  very  explicit  as  to  stealing.  He 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

made  a  point  of  stealing  and  begging  nothing  but 
rides  of  various  sorts.  He  had  begged  and  re- 
ceived rides  in  hay-carts,  touring-cars,  lumber- 
trucks:  he  had  also  managed  to  get  without  cost 
considerable  railroad  transportation.  It  sounds 
crooked,  to  me!  But  of  course  each  type  of  ride 
has  its  good  and  bad  points.  He  took  whatever 
fruit  he  saw  lying  on  the  ground,  on  the  public 
side  of  fences;  it  was  astonishing  what  excellent 
pickings  were  to  be  had  in  this  way;  he  felt  that 
an  essay  on  economics  might  be  written  on  this 
subject.  But  he  never  entered  an  orchard,  never 
even  shook  a  wayside  tree.  His  head  was  full  of 
these  delicate  distinctions.  From  Kipling  he  had 
imbibed  the  idea  that  the  white  man's  burden  can 
best  be  sustained  in  dark  lands  by  the  unfailing 
practice  of  wearing  a  dinner  jacket  in  the  evening, 
no  matter  how  solitary  the  meal.  Noblesse  oblige! 
And  it  keeps  you  from  sinking.  The  idea  had  ap- 
pealed to  Royal,  and  he  had  invented  a  variant  of 
it  to  use  in  his  travels.  He  would  at  all  times  deal 
with  the  fruits  of  the  earth  exactly  as  if  the  owner 
of  them  were  watching  him.  No  unheroic  task! 
If  he  should  fall  once,  he  told  himself,  it  would  be 
all  the  easier  to  fall  again,  and  yet  again;  and  then 
where  are  you?  As  a  matter  of  exact  record,  he 
[  114] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

did  not  fall  once;  and  I  see  no  reason  why  this 
may  not  be  set  down  to  his  credit.  It  is  of  course 
regrettable  that  a  principle  which  worked  so  well 
for  agriculture  could  not  have  been  applied  to 
transportation  also. 

Thus,  by  being  partly  prig,  partly  poet,  partly 
his  own  stage-manager,  and  altogether  boy, 
Royal  was  taking  steps  toward  being  a  man. 
There  was  absolute  truth  in  his  protestations  be- 
fore the  one-armed  justice  of  the  peace  (appar- 
ently the  universal  functionary  of  the  village)  that 
he  knew  nothing  of  the  stolen  car,  nothing  what- 
ever, from  fender  to  tail-light.  Unluckily,  on  be- 
ing asked  his  father's  name  and  address,  he  gave 
a  wholly  fantastic  reply,  his  brain  being  stuffed 
to  capacity  with  material  for  such  purposes.  I 
believe  that  he  had  a  laudable  idea  of  protect- 
ing the  family  by  "putting  one  over"  on  the 
village  Dogberry.  But  by  a  lamentable  over- 
sight, disclosed  to  the  one-armed  man  on  con- 
sulting directories  and  maps,  the  county  of 
Chesterfolk,  in  the  adjoining  State,  acknowl- 
edged no  township  called  Four  Bridges;  and 
even  had  there  been  such  a  place,  it  still  re- 
mains doubtful  whether  Royal's  putative  father, 
Algernon  M.  Hollingsworth,  that  splendid  crea- 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

ture  born  of  necessity's  invention,  would  ever 
have  been  content  to  live  there.  Other  questions 
were  put;  Royal's  Whither  was  found  to  be  fully 
as  obscure  as  his  Whence.  He  was  therefore 
clapped  as  a  "suspicious  vagrant"  into  the  jail- 
room,  a  high  and  narrow  cubicle  left  over  from 
the  previous  century,  and  unused  for  years  ex- 
cept for  the  occasional  storing  of  the  movie-man's 
impedimenta  on  wet  evenings. 

In  lieu  of  a  left  hand,  the  one-armed  justice  of 
the  peace  had  a  steel  hook,  which  he  managed 
with  an  address  that  Royal  could  but  admire.  He 
carefully  examined  our  poet's  possessions;  his 
purse,  food,  poems,  matches,  wristwatch,  tooth- 
brush, Iliad,  flashlight.  The  purse,  poems,  and 
food  he  regarded  as  negligible.  The  Iliad  re- 
ceived from  him  both  respect  and  scorn;  respect 
because  it  was  print,  scorn  because  it  was  print 
he  could  n't  read. 

"Your  Koran,  ain't  it?"  He  asked  the  ques- 
tion with  the  irony  he  thought  due  to  those  who 
gave  false  addresses.  Royal  trembled  when  hand 
and  hook  turned  those  Homeric  pages.  His 
father's  bookplate  might  give  the  whole  show 
away.  But  fortunately  that  telltale  emblem  es- 
caped the  hook-and-eye  of  justice.  And  the  man's 
[  116] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

idea  of  calling  the  book  a  Koran  had  in  it  some- 
thing that  appealed  strongly  to  the  inventor's 
own  imagination;  he  played  upon  the  theme  with 
alliterative  variations. 

"Kid  carries  Koran,"  he  ejaculated  while  pull- 
ing out  a  rickety  settee  for  the  repose  of  the  ac- 
cused. Hooking  up  Royal's  flashlight,  he  dis- 
covered a  tattered  blanket  belonging  to  the 
movie-man,  and  this  he  threw  over  the  settee, 
still  improvising.  "Koran  concealed  on  Courte- 
ous Kid."  Perhaps  that  fancy  of  his  softened  his 
fibre.  He  had  pocketed  Royal's  matches,  and  was 
about  to  confiscate  his  flashlight  also,  when  a 
humane  thought  occurred  to  him.  For  our  humor 
may  at  tunes  produce  humanity  in  ourselves,  if 
not  in  those  whom  we  expose  to  it. 

"Well,  kid,  I  guess  I'll  leave  you  your  light  to 
read  your  Koran  by.  Sorry  we  can't  give  you  a 
prayer-rug  too,  but  our  finest  Orientals  are  in 
storage,  this  season."  (He'd  show  the  young 
fella  't  givin'  false  addresses  was  a  game  two 
could  play  at!)  Royal  was  relieved  when  at  last 
the  justice  really  locked  the  door,  and  departed. 
Something  to  tell  old  Peter,  this. 

He  wondered  what  Peter,  the  practical  genius, 
would  do  in  that  ill-smelling  hole.  Peter,  he  con- 
[  H7l 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

eluded,  would  explore  things.  Royal's  flashlight 
revealed  two  flimsy  packing-cases;  the  movie- 
man  was  his  Providence,  that  night.  He  waited 
until  midnight,  by  his  watch.  He  then  set  one 
box  on  the  other,  and  by  cautious  climbing,  man- 
aged to  reach  the  tiny  barred  window,  high  in  the 
wall.  The  bars  were  ancient  in  their  shallow  sock- 
ets; Royal  was  lean,  even  leaner  than  usual;  in  a 
twinkling  he  had  leaped  down  crashing  into  some 
mournful  sumac  trees,  and  after  that,  escape  was 
easy,  along  the  adjoining  church  and  church- 
yard. Surely  the  leprecauns  were  on  his  side!  All 
of  a  sudden  he  realized  that  his  act  of  self-preser- 
vation from  so-called  justice  was  one  of  the  most 
practical  bits  of  work  he  had  ever  performed  in 
his  life.  He  had  a  momentary  gleam  of  shame  for 
his  impractical,  un-Peter-like  past,  and  even  gave 
a  thought  to  his  father,  in  his  hot  city  studio, 
working  for  the  wherewithal.  But  that  mood 
soon  passed.  The  ecstasy  of  escape  from  the 
troubles  he  had  brought  on  himself  gave  him 
wings.  Until  nearly  dawn,  he  swept  straight 
ahead,  under  a  favoring  moon.  He  was  composing 
a  Sonnet  to  Some  Sumacs. 

"A  prisoner  pent,  I  flew  to  your  fond  arms, 
And  maybe  broke  a  few  of  them,  my  dears";  — 
[  n8] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

A  wonderful  beginning !  It  would  require  some 
fine  work  with  charms,  harms,  alarms;  with  fears, 
cheers,  reveres.  But  Royal  was  perfectly  happy; 
and  no  one  can  say  that  his  inspiration  was  not 
authentic. 

Not  twenty  miles  from  his  own  home  with  its 
bacon-and-eggs  breakfasts,  he  saw  a  belated  or 
else  be-earlied  furniture- van  approaching  from  a 
wooded  road  that  met  the  highway.  Its  driver, 
so  Royal  judged  as  a  bearded  face  emerged  out  of 
the  morning  mist,  was  one  of  those  how-could-I- 
help-it  persons  who  are  always  a  little  late  or  a 
little  early,  a  type  toward  which  he  felt  drawn. 
He  waited  there,  at  the  heart  of  the  crossroads. 
The  man  hailed  him,  and  Royal,  in  his  character- 
part  of  young  man  out  of  work,  accepted  the 
proffered  lift,  and  ate  heartily  of  the  rude  liberal 
bread  and  cheese  that  tasted  of  the  leather  seat. 
They  chatted  at  ease  of  brakes,  tires,  clutches, 
and  children,  as  they  rode  quietly  into  the  morn- 
ing. Royal  contributed  most  of  the  listening;  he 
was  quite  as  much  at  home  among  elderly  workers 
for  a  living  as  with  frivolous  persons  of  his  own 
age. 

When  they  reached  Falmouth  Junction,  a  rail- 
way centre  of  note,  their  ways  diverged.  At  the 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

station,  Royal  bought  coffee,  sandwiches,  and 
fruit,  all  of  which  he  shared  with  the  man;  and 
the  man  gave  him  two  black  cigars  at  parting. 
Royal  liked  that  furniture-fellow.  He  considered 
that  when  compared  with  the  one-armed  mis- 
carrier  of  justice,  the  man  had  the  makings  of  an 
excellent  leprecaun  in  him;  his  beard  sticking  out 
of  the  mist  was  just  like  a  leprecaun's.  But  al- 
though the  man,  in  his  dreamy  behindhand  (or 
else  beforehand)  way,  had  confided  much  to 
Royal,  with  a  wealth  of  detail  as  to  his  youngest 
child,  "cutest  kid  of  the  bunch,  and  a  reg'lar 
Dannie  Webster  with  his  spellin'-book,"  our 
traveller  did  not  in  return  open  his  heart  about 
his  escape  from  the  jail-room.  For  a  long  time 
after  that  incident,  Royal  was  inclined  to  suspect 
both  justice  and  peace  in  quarters  where  they 
were  least  intended.  Falmouth  town  boasts  a 
traffic  policeman;  Royal,  on  spying  those  bright 
buttons,  took  swiftly  to  the  road  again. 

And  now,  on  the  last  stretch  of  his  wander- 
week,  he  bethought  himself  of  the  soldier  grave 
on  that  little  hill,  scarcely  an  hour's  walk  from  the 
very  end  of  his  appointed  round.  He  loved  the 
place;  he  felt  drowsy,  in  spite  of  the  railway  coffee 
and  the  fresh  morning  air,  and  he  wanted  to  lie 

[    120   ] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

down  and  sleep  for  a  pleasant  hour  under  those 
pines,  his  head  pillowed  on  heroic  ashes.  He 
phrased  it  thus  to  himself,  although  he  knew  that 
he  would  probably  find  a  better  resting-place  on 
the  warm  ground  somewhat  removed  from  the 
grave.  After  a  good  little  snatch  of  sleep,  there 
would  be  time  for  a  few  last  touches  on  the  Ama- 
ryllis poem,  and  then,  home.  The  Sumac  Sonnet 
could  wait.  After  all,  a  beefsteak  luncheon  has  its 
merits. 

Royal  was  more  tired  than  he  knew.  His  pleas- 
ant hour  of  sleep  multiplied  itself  by  two,  by  three, 
by  four.  He  woke  with  a  start  to  find  that  the  day 
was  no  longer  young.  He  would  have  to  step 
lively  if  he  hoped  to  reach  home  by  tea-time; 
scones,  fresh  from  the  oven!  But  he  had  just  had 
a  very  marvellous  dream,  and  surely,  before  the 
glamour  of  it  should  vanish,  he  owed  it  to  the 
world  to  put  some  breath  of  it  into  his  poem. 

Enthralled  by  his  verses,  the  poet  resented  the 
approach  of  that  other  traveller,  just  puffing  up 
over  the  western  slope  of  the  little  hill.  The  man 
was  forty-five  or  fifty  or  even  sixty,  the  boy 
guessed;  oh,  ever  so  old!  He  was  soiled,  obese, 
crumpled,  out  of  breath;  he  needed  a  shave. 
Limp  gray  hairs  straggled  behind  his  plaided  cap. 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

His  profile  was  fattened,  yet  highly  predacious. 
But  his  tweeds  seemed  rather  better  in  quality 
than  Royal's,  his  shoes  no  worse.  Royal's  book- 
ish theory  that  you  can  always  tell  at  a  glance 
whether  a  man  is  a  gentleman  or  not  fell  to  pieces 
under  that  fugitive's  weary,  wary  eye.  Certainly 
no  poet,  our  sumac  sonneteer  decided.  Villon 
never  looked  quite  like  that,  nor  Poe,  nor  Vachel 
Lindsay. 

IV 

YET  any  wise  observer  of  our  poor  dust  would 
have  known  at  once,  on  seeing  the  two  travel- 
lers together,  that  the  hand  of  art  had  been 
laid  inevitably  on  each;  lightly  and  graciously 
enough  on  the  youth,  rudely  and  ironically  and 
with  stripes  and  lashes  on  the  man.  Phoebus 
Apollo  hardly  knew,  as  yet,  whether  he  should 
ever  really  need  the  boy  Royal  or  not.  However, 
he  meant  to  lend  the  child  his  lute  for  a  summer 
morning  or  two,  and  hear  whatever  trailing  wisps 
of  song  those  smooth  young  fingers  could  coax 
goldenly  from  its  strings.  Yes,  Royal  was  a  true 
probationer  of  Apollo.  But  with  the  man,  the 
god  would  plainly  have  no  more  to  do,  except  by 
way  of  bitter  punishment.  For  the  man  was  too 
[  122  ] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

old,  too  ill,  too  evil,  even,  to  be  of  any  further  serv- 
ice in  the  temple  of  the  Muses.  Those  ladies  do 
not  carry  a  pardoner's  wallet.  They  have  no  pen- 
sion system;  uncompromising  dames,  the  Nine, 
when  all  is  told. 

Little  as  he  liked  the  looks  of  the  man  in  his 
tumbled  tweeds,  Royal  nevertheless  gave  him  a 
good-day.  Why  not?  The  man  enveloped  the 
boy  with  a  strange,  hunted-yet-hunting  glance, 
and  after  returning  the  salutation  in  a  mannerly 
enough  way,  threw  himself  down  heavily  on  the 
pleasant  pine  leaves,  rather  close  to  the  spot  that 
Royal  had  chosen  for  his  own  perfect  seclusion 
with  song.  Our  poet's  second  sight  instantly  de- 
clared that  there  was  something  wrong.  What  if 
this  were  the  wretch  who  had  really  stolen  the 
car  whose  loss  had  threatened  the  Royal  liberties? 
Well,  if  so,  that  was  the  one-armed  justice's  affair, 
not  Royal's.  The  boy  had  lately  read  in  a  news- 
paper that  our  Anglo-Saxon  law  presupposes  the 
innocence  of  the  accused,  until  proven  guilty. 
An  excellent  idea!  Fair  play  for  all,  then,  in- 
cluding the  disinherited. 

Still,  it  was  but  natural  that  he  should  try  to 
put  a  self-protecting  distance  between  himself  and 
the  other,  tramps  though  they  both  were.  So  he 
[  123] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

hid  his  ode  in  his  pocket,  and  pulled  out  his  Iliad, 
that  epic  which  before  now  had  laid  heavy  condi- 
tions upon  him,  and  was  likely  to  do  so  in  the 
future.  Impressive  gesture!  Royal  had  several 
times  used  it  to  advantage  during  his  travels. 
Pulling  our  your  Iliad,  no  matter  how  amiably, 
is  a  way  of  drawing  the  line.  This  particular  Iliad 
had,  it  is  true,  been  something  of  a  disappoint- 
ment to  him,  at  the  start.  He  had  meant  to  carry 
his  school  copy,  a  pocket  edition  that  contained 
only  one  book  of  the  poem,  with  English  notes  so 
copious  as  to  constitute  a  "pony."  In  the  confu- 
sion of  a  brother's  departure,  mischievous  Peter 
had  contrived  to  dislodge  Royal's  own  Iliad  from 
its  place  in  Royal's  pocket,  and  to  substitute  for 
it  an  Iliad  from  his  father's  library.  The  parental 
Iliad,  though  like  the  other  in  size  and  shape,  was 
a  poor  thing.  It  had  all  the  books  of  the  poem,  to 
be  sure,  but  in  solid  Greek;  not  a  word  of  English 
from  cover  to  cover.  Some  German  had  printed 
it  that  way.  Annoying!  But  after  his  first  dismay 
was  over,  Royal  had  managed  very  well  with  the 
volume;  to-day,  he  drew  it  out  as  readily  as  if  it 
had  the  English  notes. 

With  this  man,  however,  the  trick  was  wasted. 
When  the  boy  laid  his  Iliad  down  casually  beside 
[  124] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

him,  the  man  picked  it  up,  no  less  casually.  Ho- 
mer had  no  terrors  for  him,  it  would  seem.  With 
a  hand  whose  trembling  he  could  not  quite  con- 
ceal, he  turned  over  the  leaves  to  regain  his  lost 
breath.  In  a  leisurely,  yet  largely  gesticulating 
way,  he  adjusted  his  black-ribboned  eyeglass, 
and  contemplated  both  bookplate  and  title-page. 
He  then  made  short  work  of  Royal's  pretensions 
to  classic  learning,  merely  by  turning  to  Book 
XXIII,  virgin  soil  as  yet  untrod  by  any  foot  in 
Royal's  form.  Book  XXIII  appeared  to  interest 
him.  Suddenly  he  began  to  read  out,  hi  orotund 
English,  the  episode  of  the  funeral  pyre,  with  all 
its  meaty  details. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  was  but  a  gesture  of  the 
traveller;  a  gesture  fully  as  empty  as  Royal's,  a 
scrap  of  drama  within  a  drama.  The  rascal  was 
not  translating.  He  was  reciting  from  memory 
a  fragment  from  Lord  Derby's  translation.  In 
palmier  days,  he  had  constantly  used  those 
twenty  lines  with  telling  effect,  in  his  popular  dra- 
matic elocution  classes.  He  had  even  incorpo- 
rated them,  with  full  directions  as  to  tempo,  em- 
phasis, and  climax,  into  his  Dramatic  Interludes 
No.  i,  a  book  which,  though  not  precisely  a  best 
seller,  had  often  been  bought  along  the  border- 
[  125  1 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

line  that  separates  the  real  stage  folk  from  the 
stage-struck  fringe  of  the  shadowy  general  public. 
And  now,  for  an  audience  of  one,  that  "slow- 
pac'd  ox,"  those  "jars  of  honey,"  the  "four  power- 
ful horses,"  the  "nine  dogs,"  were  all  presented 
with  an  unction  that  seemed  incredible  in  a  stout 
man  so  out  of  breath  a  moment  before.  The  re- 
citer licked  his  lips  feverishly  over  his  "slaugh- 
tered carcasses,"  and  yet  was  able  to  reserve  some 
climacteric  gusto  for  the  closing  lines, 

"Last  with  the  sword,  by  evil  counsel  swayed, 
Twelve  noble  youths  he  slew,  the  sons  of  Troy." 

He  appeared  to  find  this  an  especially  appetiz- 
ing detail,  and  repeated  the  couplet,  laying  his 
hot  fingers  on  Royal's  wrist. 

The  boy's  second  sight  had  been  caught  nap- 
ping during  that  recitation,  but  at  the  touch, 
sprang  up,  alert. 

"Royal  child,"  she  whispered,  "quick,  quick! 
Whatever  are  you  about?  Can't  you  see  that 
this  wretched  actor-man  is  far  uncleaner  and  viler 
than  anything  you  observed,  with  fearful  curios- 
ity, in  the  Polish  boarding-house?  " 

And  when  Royal  saw  those  fat  fingers  on  his 
wrist,  they  looked  to  him  like  worms,  and  he 
wanted  to  be  gone.  But  he  wanted  to  be  a  man 
[  126] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

of  the  world,  too,  if  a  poet  may;  one  who  would 
needlessly  insult  no  passer-by. 

"  Hot  stuff,  eh,"  he  remarked  carelessly  as  he 
rose  from  the  pine  leaves.  It  seemed  to  him  an  ap- 
propriate thing  to  say  about  a  funeral  pyre  found 
in  the  classics.  The  man  had  dropped  the  book; 
the  boy  swooped  easily  down,  Discobolus-like, 
and  swept  it  to  safety  within  his  pocket.  "  Well, 
I'm  off!  Date  down  below.  Afraid  I'm  late, 
as  it  is."  His  eyes  were  appalled  by  the  fero- 
cious hunger  of  the  eyes  they  met;  the  hun- 
ger, the  anger,  the  fatigue,  the  despair.  Had  he 
but  known  hi  his  own  young  body  and  soul  just 
what  these  things  meant,  and  just  how  horribly 
they  were  gnawing  that  man's  vitals,  he  would 
have  stayed,  in  common  human  kindness.  But  he 
could  not  know.  Besides,  his  second  sight  had 
him  cannily  in  her  grip,  and  with  all  her  might  and 
main  was  pushing  him  straight  home.  Curiously 
enough,  unaware  as  he  was  of  "my  uncle  the  psy- 
chiatrist's" worm's-eye  prophecies,  he  said  to 
himself,  using  Uncle  Tom's  very  words,  "I 
started  out  with  the  leprecauns,  and  now  perhaps 
I'm  winding  up  with  the  lepers!"  It  gave  him  a 
pleased  sense  of  his  own  individuality,  that  Fate 
had  arranged  it  so.  It  was  the  sort  of  thing  that 
[  127] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

did  n't  happen  to  most  boys,  he  thought.  With- 
out knowing  why,  he  added  to  himself,  "Just  as 
well,  perhaps."  Yet  he  felt  sorry  for  the  tweed- 
clad  flesh  down  there  at  his  feet.  "  Whatever 's 
the  matter  with  the  poor  fish?  Sure'there's  some- 
thing bothering  his  bean.  The  Ford,  perhaps." 

Whatever  it  was,  he  knew  he  could  not  stop  to 
set  it  right.  But  at  any  rate,  he  could  offer  a  sand- 
wich. The  law  of  the  road's  hospitality  was  in  his 
heart.  He  opened  his  tin  box,  and  with  his  inimi- 
table rippling  puppy-dog  grace,  emptied  out  its 
contents  beside  the  stranger.  The  articles  thus 
disclosed  had  by  now  attained  a  composite  flavor 
through  close  contact  within  the  sun-warmed  tin. 
Royal  suddenly  knew  this,  and  was  sorry.  There 
were  the  three  thick  railway  sandwiches,  the  two 
black  cigars,  and  several  bars  of  chocolate  he  had 
bought  the  day  before  at  the  Charlemont  five- 
and-ten,  from  a  radiant,  chiffon-clad  girl  whom  he 
had  secretly  christened  Lalage;  for  his  next  poem, 
of  course,  after  the  Amaryllis  one  was  done,  oh, 
quite,  quite  done.  He  kept  for  himself  one  bar 
of  the  chocolate.  Its  cover  had  the  color  of  the 
girl's  warm  dark  eyes,  and  so  would  be  a  mate- 
rial witness,  during  his  inspiration  for  the  Lalage 
stanzas. 

[  128] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

"Excuse  me,  but  you  seem  to  be  a  traveller, 
like  myself.  I'd  be  awfully  glad  if  you  can  use 
these  things."  From  his  jacket  pocket  he  drew  out 
two  ripe  peaches,  oozing,  and  these  he  added  to 
the  store.  "Cheero!"  He  loped  down  the  hill, 
with  long,  uneasy  strides,  not  really  happy  until 
he  was  far  away.  His  thoughts  were  confused. 
"What  a  dreadful  old  beast!  Actor,  of  course, 
probably  screen.  Face  seemed  familiar,  too  fa- 
miliar. Some  villain,  what?  Needed  the  car  to 
make  a  getaway  from  something  or  other." 

All  of  a  sudden  the  Homeric  couplet  mouthed 
by  the  man  returned  with  terrific  force  to  his 
mind. 
"Last  with  the  sword,  by  evil  counsel  swayed, 

Twelve  noble  youths  he  slew,  the  sons  of  Troy." 

The  poet  stopped  short  in  his  tracks.  "Golly- 
dieu!  I  see  it  all  now.  I've  been  talking  with  a 
murderer!  And  they  always  come  back  to  revisit 
the  scene,  every  one  knows  that.  Of  course,  he 
did  n't  do  up  as  many  as  twelve.  It  was  re- 
morse made  him  nutty  about  the  number.  I 
wonder  now — " 

His  wonder  lit  his  eyes  and  freshened  his  steps 
until  he  reached  the  garden-gate,  with  the  great 
apple  tree  over  it,  and  the  carved  millstone  below 
[  129  ] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

as  a  tread.  Old  Peter  was  probably  just  coming 
up  from  the  pool.  He  himself  needed  a  bath, 
frightfully!  Then  he  saw  his  mother,  in  the  white- 
and-purple  iris  dress  he  loved,  walking  toward  the 
green  tea-table  under  the  pergola.  Agnes  with 
her  tray  would  soon  appear.  For  the  present, 
Royal's  appointed  rounds  were  over.  An  immense 
wave  of  tenderness  suffused  his  whole  being. 
Mother,  bath,  scones,  sanctuary!  Those  first  and 
last  words  he  called  aloud.  Mother,  sanctuary!  • 


LEFT  to  himself,  the  elder  traveller  pounced 
on  the  peaches  and  devoured  them,  smearing 
their  juice  on  his  dry  lips.  He  then  tore  the  meat 
from  the  poor  hearts  of  the  sandwiches,  and  be- 
gan to  eat  it  greedily.  It  was  his  first  meat  in  four 
days,  and  he  was  distinctly  of  the  carnivorous 
order,  and  no  mere  nut-eater.  The  maid  at  the 
Canaan  inn  had  looked  suspiciously  at  him,  four 
days  ago,  and  from  that  moment,  fear  had  palsied 
him.  Not  daring  to  buy  gas  under  the  pitiless  pub- 
licity of  the  red  pump,  he  had  abandoned  his 
stolen  Ford.  Like  Royal,  he  was  now  on  a  soli- 
tary walking  tour. 

Since  the  incident  at  the  inn,  he  had  lived  on 
[  130] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

package  food,  bought  at  obscure  crossroads  gro- 
cery stores.  All  his  life,  he  had  kept  a  fine  con- 
tempt for  package  food,  the  various  frugal  tinned 
and  cartoned  things  the  bourgeois  eat.  He  himself 
always  wanted  everything  fresh  from  the  vine, 
he  used  to  say.  Everything  except  the  grape; 
that  was  different.  Just  at  present,  he  was  more 
thirsty  than  hungry.  Royal's  black  cigars  were  a 
poor  substitute  for  a  living  drink. 

" Blast  the  boy  with  his  clean  airs!  'A  traveller 
like  myself!'  Little  Lord  Bountiful,  to  be  sure!" 

His  face  looked  very  old  in  the  afternoon  light. 
It  was  purplish  red  as  to  the  forehead,  and  that 
whitishness  around  the  mouth  was  not  wholly  to 
be  explained  by  a  four  days'  stubble  of  graying 
beard.  Even  while  he  blasted  the  boy,  he  likened 
himself  to  him.  "Just  what  I  was  at  his  age,  a 
little  Lord  Bountiful!  And,  God,  look  at  me  now! " 

If  ever  a  man  needed  God's  look  at  that  mo- 
ment, it  was  this  fugitive.  Let  it  be  understood 
clearly,  however,  he  was  not  at  all  the  murderer 
Royal's  imagination  had  conjured  up.  That  boy's 
second  sight  had  been  working  overtime,  and  had 
fallen  into  error.  Except  in  an  indirect  way,  the 
man  had  never  been  a  murderer.  He  had  never 
desired  the  death  of  any  human  being.  Yet  he 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

had  undoubtedly  turned  the  feet  of  at  least 
"twelve  noble  youths"  into  the  roads  that  lead 
to  death.  Also,  he  was  revisiting  a  scene.  There- 
fore we  may  as  well  admit  that  Royal's  imagin- 
ings had  strange  truths  mingled  with  their  errors. 
Perhaps  his  visions,  like  yours  and  mine,  were 
made  up  wholly  from  truths,  but  truths  myste- 
riously misplaced;  truths  disordered,  and  so,  un- 
serviceable. 

The  fugitive's  crime,  that  is  to  say,  the  partic- 
ular crime  for  which  he  was  at  that  moment  being 
hunted  from  hill  to  hill,  was  one  known  to  the 
most  ancient  civilizations.  It  takes  its  title  from 
shameful  lost  cities  engulfed  under  Divine  wrath. 
Yet  to-day  there  are  gentle  communities  where 
even  its  Biblical  name,  if  heard  by  chance  in  the 
pulpit  fulminations  of  some  itinerant  preacher, 
would  not  be  understood.  And  because,  deep- 
rooted  in  the  nature  of  mankind,  there  is  that 
which  cries  out  upon  this  crime  as  an  abomina- 
tion, the  law  defines  it  darkly,  and  punishes  it 
strictly.  "La  nature  a  de  ces  bizarreries"?  Only 
a  long-descended  Mediterranean  intellect,  with  a 
planetary  point  of  view,  could  calmly  make  that 
comment  on  the  case ! 

The  outlaw  lit  one  of  the  black  cigars,  and 
[  132] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

thrust  the  thin  bars  of  chocolate  into  his  pocket. 
Loathsome  package  food,  again,  but  better  than 
nothing,  if  worse  came  to  the  worst.  Of  late,  he 
had  feared  even  to  enter  the  crossroads  grocery 
stores,  with  their  meagre  yet  apparently  varied 
supplies,  with  their  horribly  unexpected  little 
electric  bulbs  illuminating  a  customer  whose 
trembling  hope  had  been  to  remain  unseen! 

Royal's  cigar  sickened  him,  and  he  dropped  it, 
still  burning,  into  the  brown  pine  needles.  He 
watched  the  tiny,  red-rimmed  hole  it  was  making. 
The  circle  grew  larger  and  larger.  Curse  it,  why 
not  let  this  be  the  end-all  here?  But  just  as  the 
slowly  widening  red  rim  really  flickered  into  a 
faint  blaze,  the  red  on  his  forehead  rushed  fiercely 
over  the  rest  of  his  face.  No,  by  God,  no!  Not 
that  way!  With  his  woollen  cap  he  stifled  the 
flame.  It  died  down  utterly,  and  with  it  his  own 
last  remnant  of  vigor. 

Stiffly,  and  with  manifest  suffering,  he  rose 
from  the  ground.  Yet,  in  a  very  real  sense,  he  had 
a  far  better  right  to  a  place  under  those  pines  than 
even  the  poet  Royal  himself  could  claim.  In  his 
fevered  outlaw  imagination,  conjuring  up  terrors 
where  none  existed,  and  courting  dangers  una- 
ware, that  place  to  him  was  sanctuary.  The  one 
I  133] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

spot  on  earth!  For  his  fathers  had  cleared  those 
hills  above,  and  ploughed  the  fields  beneath. 
That  soldier  of  the  Revolution  was  his  own  ances- 
tor. Their  names  given  in  baptism  and  granted 
by  birth  were  the  same,  Jeremiah  Burton.  In  the 
year  eighteen-twenty,  one  Jeremiah  Burton  had 
departed  this  life,  full  of  honors;  and  now,  a  cen- 
tury later,  this  other  Jeremiah  Burton  was  still 
living,  and  under  an  exceeding  weight  of  dishonor. 
A  fugitive  from  justice,  he  was  seeking  sanctuary 
among  his  own  kin.  And  no  person  in  that  State 
knew  him  for  the  Burton  that  he  was. 

No  less  than  the  boy  Royal,  he  had  aspired  to 
the  arts.  Writing,  painting,  dancing,  acting,  he 
had  loved  them,  every  one.  Yet  never  to  the  ex- 
tent of  drudgery,  or  self-sacrifice,  surely!  Art  for 
a  good  time's  sake  was  his  motto.  He  had  always 
joyously  avowed  himself  a  " '  carpe  diem '  fellow, 
don't  you  know."  Perhaps  his  Burton  ancestors, 
in  their  passion  for  honest  toil  and  meritorious 
self-immolation,  had  drawn  too  heavily  on  springs 
of  energy,  both  physical  and  spiritual,  that 
should  have  been  reserved  for  their  descendants. 
So  young  Jeremiah  Burton  wrote  skits,  painted 
landscapes,  acted  in  vaudeville;  seldom  very  well, 
never  at  great  pains.  Of  all  his  various  arenas  for 
[  I34l 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

the  exhibition  of  his  personality,  he  had  concluded 
that  the  stage  offered  the  most  glamorous  possi- 
bilities. Still,  Jeremiah  is  no  name  to  be  pasted 
gayly  up  on  the  billboards,  is  it?  And  even  Bur- 
ton itself  has  a  melancholy  look  when  printed. 
Very  early  in  life,  therefore,  the  Jeremiah  Burton 
of  the  flushed  forehead  and  fat  predatory  nose  had 
Geraldized  his  Christian  name,  and  given  a  twist, 
even  more  romantic,  to  his  surname.  It  was  as 
Gerald  Bertello  that  he  had  hoped,  when  scarcely 
older  than  the  boy  Royal,  to  take  the  world  by 
storm  from  behind  the  footlights.  It  was  as  Ger- 
ald Bertello  that  he  had  studied  and  strutted  and 
caroused  through  the  downward  zigzag  of  his 
middle  years.  It  was  as  Gerald  Bertello  that  he 
was  designated  in  the  warrant  for  his  arrest.  But 
it  was  as  Jeremiah  Burton  that  he  was  making  his 
last  stand,  there  on  the  hill,  among  his  kinsmen. 
Sanctuary! 

The  slate  stone  that  marked  the  soldier's  grave 
still  stood  erect.  One  could  read  every  word 
carved  upon  it.  Its  willow  tree  wept  in  a  peren- 
nial freshness  of  stem  and  leaf.  The  cherub  and 
skull  and  crossbones  had  not  turned  a  hair.  But 
the  more  pretentious  marble  slab  placed  over  the 
warrior's  relict,  Thanksgiving  Burton,  was  al- 
I  135  1 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

together  a  weaker  vessel;  at  least,  its  foundations 
were  less  sure.  It  had  lately  fallen  down  flat 
under  the  hilltop  winds,  and  in  falling,  had  laid 
low  a  part  of  the  slender  iron  fence  that  enclosed 
the  graves  of  those  early  Burtons;  Burtons  who 
had  wrestled  with  that  soil  and  conquered  it,  until 
the  soil,  in  turn,  conquered  them. 

The  fugitive  who  had  lately  read  to  the  boy 
Royal  sonorous  words  of  the  twelve  youths  of 
Troy  felt  strangely  dizzy  as  he  pondered  on  the 
carven  tribute  to  his  ancestor.  It  began,  as  he 
well  remembered,  "A  soldier  of  the  Revolution 
and  of  God."  Dizzy  as  he  was,  he  would  like  to 
recite  the  whole  of  that  inscription,with  the  proper 
emphasis,  for  the  youngster's  benefit.  Where 
was  the  kid,  that  little  Lord  Bountiful,  "a  trav- 
eller like  myself"?  Oh,  yes,  he  remembered  now, 
but  with  immense,  overpowering  difficulty.  The 
boy  had  vanished,  fled  away  on  the  wings  of  an 
Iliad.  "A  soldier  of  the  Revolution,"  —  but  the 
words  he  was  staring  at  were  dizzier  than  himself. 
Hell,  they  must  be,  whirling  so!  Blindly  throw- 
ing out  an  arm,  he  stumbled  and  fell,  his  hand 
striking  the  fallen  marble  slab  in  memory  of 
Thanksgiving  Burton.  Like  Royal,  he  had  for  the 
present  reached  the  end  of  his  appointed  rounds. 
I  136] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

VI 

BELOW,  just  beyond  a  fork  in  the  dusty  stage- 
road,  Remy  Mariette,  commissioner  of  highways, 
was  finishing  his  day's  work  of  filling  with 
gravel  the  deeper  ruts  and  holes.  He  was  a 
lithe,  brown,  ruddy-cheeked  young  man,  known 
far  and  wide  as  a  great  worker,  whether  alone  or 
in  company.  To-day  he  was  alone.  It  happened 
that  he  was  not  only  road  commissioner,  road 
laborer,  mason,  and  the  best  bass  of  the  choir;  he 
was  also  the  village  constable.  In  the  inner  pocket 
of  his  frayed  working  coat  was  the  secret  warrant 
for  the  taking  of  Gerald  Bertello.  That  docu- 
ment had  been  very  much  on  his  mind  for  the  past 
few  days,  because,  as  he  himself  expressed  it, 
"  constabling  was  a  new  job  for  him."  However, 
he  was  not  thinking,  just  then,  of  the  cares  of  his 
office.  He  was  thinking  that  before  going  home, 
he  had  plenty  of  time  to  skip  up  the  hill  and  see 
whether  the  old  gravestones  were  as  badly  off  as 
reported  at  the  last  town  meeting.  If  so,  it  meant 
another  job  for  him;  a  good  one,  too,  at  mason's 
wages.  He  swung  briskly  up  the  slope,  his  crow- 
bar as  staff.  He  might  need  it  to  pry  at  the  fallen 
stone. 

I  1371 


Their  /Appointed  Rounds 

Well,  well,  a  man  asleep.  Queer  place  to  choose. 
Drunk,  perhaps?  Hey,  there,  you  man  asleep! 

The  constable  leaned  over  the  sleeper,  and  then 
drew  back  in  mingled  disgust  and  amazement. 
The  disgust  was  for  the  criminal,  the  amazement 
because  a  criminal  so  clever  should  thus  easily 
be  caught.  He  knew  his  quarry  in  an  instant. 
He  recognized  Gerald  Bertello,  in  former  years  a 
summer-time  figure  making  himself  and  his  com- 
rades mightily  at  home  among  the  mountains. 
Gerald  Bertello's  name  and  face  had  often  been 
shown  on  the  screen  at  the  Monday  movies. 
Looked  the  kind  that  might  turn  desperate,  too. 
Just  as  well  he  had  brought  along  the  bar,  in  case. 
With  his  foot,  yet  not  unkindly,  he  prodded  the 
sleeper,  once,  twice,  three  times,  and  yet  again. 
Gerald  Bertello  did  not  stir.  Suddenly  the  young 
constable,  who  had  a  fading-flower  wife  whom  he 
loved,  and  who  was  therefore  wise  beyond  his 
years  in  the  lore  of  hearts  and  pulses,  knelt  down 
by  the  man's  side. 

When  he  rose,  it  was  with  a  strange  sense  of  he 
knew  not  what  complexities.  He  was  not  given 
to  self-analysis.  But,  because  of  the  good  French 
blood  in  his  veins,  he  took  off  his  cap,  and  bowed 
his  head,  very  simply  and  sincerely,  yet  almost 
[  138] 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

mechanically,  in  the  presence  of  death.  He  was 
young  for  a  constable,  scarcely  seven  years  older 
than  the  boy  Royal.  Indeed,  the  two  had  long 
been  friends  in  that  wide  countryside.  They  were 
Remy  and  Royal  together.  Not  without  a  touch 
of  envy,  Royal  had  last  spring  congratulated  him 
on  his  appointment.  Ah,  this  would  be  something 
to  tell  Royal  about,  when  they  should  meet  again; 
a  queer  boy,  always  wanting  to  know  queer  things ! 

Puzzled  as  to  his  immediate  duty,  the  young 
man  meditated  a  moment,  then  made  a  swift 
decision.  Best  leave  everything  untouched,  and 
seek  help  and  counsel  from  his  elders,  in  the  vil- 
lage below.  He  gazed  at  the  sleeper's  cap,  the 
cigars,  the  scattered  bread,  the  little  American 
flag  left  from  last  Decoration  Day;  but  he  did  not 
alter  anything  he  saw.  Some  sense  of  strict  pro- 
cedure in  such  cases  constrained  him. 

Before  descending  the  slope,  he  looked  up  cu- 
riously into  the  sky,  to  note  what  birds  might  be 
abroad.  He  remembered  the  crows  he  had  seen 
early  that  morning  in  his  new  orchard;  some  of 
them  were  plucking  deep  bites  from  his  ripest  ap- 
ples. So  from  his  coat  he  took  the  warrant,  and 
buttoned  it  into  the  pocket  of  his  soldier  shirt. 
Then  he  spread  his  coat  carefully  over  the  sleep- 
[  I39l 


Their  Appointed  Rounds 

er's  face,  its  profile  half  lost  among  the  brown  pine 
leaves  and  the  sparse  vine-wreaths  springing  up 
through  them.  He  even  succeeded  in  covering 
the  hand  lying  against  the  edge  of  the  fallen 
stone.  He  wondered  whether  the  man  had  cried 
aloud  for  help.  He  noted,  partly  as  a  constable's 
duty  and  partly  as  something  to  tell  to  the  boy 
Royal,  that  the  hand  seemed  to  be  stretched  out 
in  a  dumb  gesture,  whether  of  hope  or  of  despair, 
toward  the  stone  and  the  writing  on  the  stone,  — 

"  I  know  that  my  Redeemer  Iweth, 
And  that" 

The  last  line,  in  the  stiff  italic  of  the  eighteen- 
thirties,  was  blotted  out  by  lichens  and  earth- 
stains,  but  Remy  Mariette  knew  the  words  well. 
They  were  in  a  chant  the  choir  often  sang.  To- 
day they  hurt  him;  since  kneeling  by  that  sleeper 
with  the  still  heart,  he  had  been  thinking  inces- 
santly, with  a  tightening  pain  in  his  throat,  of  the 
flower-like  wife  at  home.  He  leaned  on  his  iron 
bar  an  instant,  and  shivered.  The  sun  had  gone 
away  from  that  place.  From  a  far  wood  a  hermit 
thrush  poured  out  its  exquisite,  passionless  hymn 
of  Paradise.  Then  it  seemed  to  the  young  man 
that  all  the  sadness  in  the  world  was  brooding 
over  the  hill  with  the  graves. 


SPEAKING  OF  ANGELS 

I 

THE  youth's  name  was  Apollos  Rivers.  We 
admired  him,  used  him,  and  for  a  time,  de- 
spised him,  too.  Why  we  admired  and  used,  I  can 
easily  explain.  Apollos  was  every  inch  his  name  — 
blond,  athletic,  superb;  no  model  in  New  York 
posed  as  faithfully.  Why  we  despised  —  well,  the 
logic  of  that  is  more  complicated.  Our  contempt 
was  doubtless  merely  a  habit,  formed  on  sight 
unseen  and  strengthened  by  hearsay.  Apollos, 
indeed !  How  absurd  a  name  for  the  oldest  Rivers 
boy,  seeking  work  in  studios!  In  vain  he  had 
politely  explained  to  us  that  his  late  father,  a 
bookish  Montreal  goldsmith,  had  so  greatly  ad- 
mired the  senior  Paul  Revere  of  colonial  history 
(the  Paul  Revere  whose  Huguenot  name  had  orig- 
inally been  Apollos  Rivoire)  that  he  himself, 
British  subject  though  he  was,  had  bestowed  the 
name  Apollos  on  his  own  firstborn.  Later  Rivers 
arrivals,  less  magnificent  in  physique,  had  to  con- 
tent themselves  with  names  less  proud  —  Tom, 
Chuck,  Nipper,  and  plain  Ellen. 
[  Mi  J 


Speaking  of  Angels 

Perhaps  we  would  have  accepted  that  explana- 
tion, if  somebody  (that  eternally  busy  somebody) 
had  not  seen  young  Apollos  at  an  Academy  re- 
ception, his  ears  tinted  rose-pink,  with  cheeks  to 
match,  and  his  vigorous  young  eyelashes  weighted 
with  whatever  it  is  the  chorus  ladies  use  to  veil 
and  enhance  their  already  too  potent  come- 
hither-of-the-eye.  After  this,  do  you  wonder  that 
we  jumped  at  the  conclusion  that  Apollos  was 
merely  a  name  the  youth  had  wished  on  himself, 
a  nom  de  pose,  as  it  were?  And  why  did  he  polish 
his  nails?  Unnatural  in  a  boy  of  eighteen!  Any- 
how, we  would  n't  have  done  it,  at  that  age.  And 
I  fear  that  with  some  of  us,  even  his  honest  Ca- 
nadian accent  was  against  him.  Take  the  word 
been,  for  instance.  Those  whose  grandfathers  had 
always  said  ben,  and  whose  mothers  had  said  bin, 
were  repelled  when  the  Montreal  lad  called  it 
bean. 

But  the  posing  of  Apollos  (one  can't  forget 
that!)  was  absolutely  the  best  I  had  ever  met  any- 
where. He  first  came  to  me  when  I  was  doing  that 
big  California  thing;  you  know,  the  one  they  call 
Three  Angels,  two  of  the  angels  being  winged 
marble  youths  in  flat  relief,  kneeling,  and  the 
third  a  retributive  sort  of  shrouded  female  figure 
[  142] 


Speaking  of  Angels 

in  bronze,  standing,  of  course,  and  dominating 
the  other  two.  Get  me?  Oh,  yes,  in  the  round, 
she  was.  I  had  no  trouble  in  finding  her  type,  no 
trouble  at  all.  Powerful  women  abound,  these 
days.  But  the  youths  were  a  more  difficult  matter. 
Of  course  I  did  n't  want  them  to  look  Athenian, 
as  if  I  'd  just  dislodged  them  from  the  Parthenon 
frieze,  and  given  them  a  pair  of  wings  apiece;  but 
then,  on  the  other  hand,  I  did  n't  care  to  have 
them  suggest  that  I  'd  merely  picked  them  up  on 
the  beach  at  Coney  Island,  the  Sunday  before. 
Angels  must  n't  bear  too  personal  a  stamp,  you 
know.  [To  my  thinking,  no  artist  has  ever  sur- 
passed Saint-Gaudens  in  creating  the  impersonal, 
other-worldly  type.  But  he  always  used  a  lot 
of  wonder-drapery  for  his  angelic  hosts;  I  had 
merely  wings. 

I  had  tried  a  good  many  youths  from  thirteen 
to  thirty,  before  I  finally  decided  to  take  with  me 
to  my  summer  studio,  for  a  period  of  ten  weeks, 
Apollos  Rivers  and  Phineas  Stickney.  Remem- 
bering those  tinted  ears,  I  had  some  doubt  about 
Apollos  and  his  staying  powers  through  a  country 
summer,  far  from  all  but  the  most  elementary 
sort  of  movies  and  like  attractions;  but  I  had  a 
hope  that  the  influence  of  Phineas  Stickney, 
I  1431 


Speaking  of  Angels 

coupled  with  my  own  persuasions,  would  keep  the 
boy  on  the  side  of  the  angels. 

In  fact,  the  angels  were  all  that  counted  with 
me,  that  summer.  The  commission  was  an  im- 
portant one,  and  the  contract  ironclad.  If  within 
three  years  I  could  n't  produce  the  Three  Angels, 
"complete  in  place  and  in  the  final  materials  as 
hereinbefore  specified,"  my  name,  on  the  Golden 
Coast,  would  be  mud  instead  of  Jefferson.  And 
the  three  years  had  by  now  dwindled  to  one  year 
only!  Time  pressed.  I'd  been  diligent  and  fore- 
handed enough,  Heaven  knows.  If  anything,  I 
am  diligent  to  a  fault.  The  retributive  woman 
was  all  done  in  bronze;  but  those  two  youths 
were  n't  yet  ready  for  the  plaster,  let  alone  the 
"final  materials  as  hereinbefore  specified." 

My  work  in  the  country  studio  was  cut  out  for 
me.  I  had  had  an  assistant  there  for  some  weeks, 
setting  up  the  full-size  work  from  a  half-size 
study;  but  when  I  saw  the  thing  sketched  out  in 
the  large,  I  was  not  at  all  satisfied  with  my  orig- 
inal idea  of  those  figures.  I  wanted  to  make  cer- 
tain very  drastic  changes;  I  really  needed  both 
Apollos  and  Phineas,  using  each  lad  part  of  the 
day.  Rough  on  me,  rather;  and  I  suppose  fellows 
in  shops  and  offices  would  open  their  eyes  if  they 
[  144  ] 


Speaking  of  Angels 

saw  a  mere  artist  —  next  door  to  a  do-nothing, 
you  know  —  beginning  work  every  morning  at 
five  and  quitting  at  summer  sundown;  yes,  and 
perhaps  stealing  back  for  more  study  by  twilight. 
For  it's  twilight  that  wipes  out  all  the  pettiness 
that  the  day  reveals;  it's  twilight  that  knows  all 
and  tells  only  the  good,  in  sculpture.  If  it  were 
not  for  the  healing  touch  of  twilight  on  our  work, 
how  many  of  us  sculptors  would  have  abandoned 
the  art,  long  ago!  Well,  I've  often  marvelled  at 
the  amount  of  work  I  put  through  that  summer. 
Of  course  it  makes  a  difference  when  a  man's 
work  is  such  that  he  can  make  a  lark  out  of  it,  as 
well  as  a  living.  Still,  don't  run  away  with  the 
idea  that  any  art  is  pure  ecstasy  every  minute. 
Nothing  is. 

I  don't  know  why  I  felt  so  uneasy  about  Apol- 
los.  All  sorts  of  sinister  anxieties  haunted  me. 
Did  I  fear  that  he  would  burn  up  my  barn  of  a 
studio?  No,  for  he  smoked  neither  cigarettes  nor 
a  pipe.  Would  he  elope  with  the  cook,  leaving  us 
with  an  empty  larder  and  a  desecrated  hearth? 
No,  for  if  his  own  words  were  to  be  trusted, 
skirts  bored  him.  Would  he  paint  his  ears,  and 
so  make  talk  for  the  village  folk?  How  could  I 
tell?  My  chief  hope  was  in  the  influence  of 
[  145  1 


Speaking  of  Angels 

Phineas.  The  two  would  naturally  be  thrown 
together  at  the  farmhouse  where  they  boarded. 
Phineas,  as  I  had  seen  him  in  the  city,  was  an  un- 
usually attractive  lad.  His  posing,  to  be  sure, 
left  something  to  be  desired.  But  then,  very 
few  models  in  this  world,  I  knew,  had  both  the 
figure  and  the  posing  power  that  Apollos  pos- 
sessed. A  rare  combination! 

Phineas  was  a  boy  with  no  end  of  ancestry.  His 
father  had  been  a  Mayor,  filling  out  some  one's 
term,  in  a  great  New  England  city;  his  grand- 
father had  been  Governor  of  a  near  Western 
State;  and  to  crown  all,  his  grandfather's  great- 
grandfather had  been  a  Signer.  I  wondered  how 
he  could  stoop  to  pose,  after  all  that!  But  for 
some  reason,  he  wanted  to  study  modelling,  and 
so  had  begged  me  to  take  him  on  as  assistant. 
When  I  declined  the  honor,  he  offered  to  pose; 
anything  to  forward  his  artistic  studies.  I  en- 
gaged him,  and  naturally  thinking  that  so  august 
a  personage  deserved  more  consideration  than 
Apollos,  I  allotted  to  the  aristocrat  the  easier, 
briefer  afternoon  sessions,  and  took  Apollos  with 
the  morning  dews. 

We  had  a  routine.  From  five  till  quarter  past, 
Apollos  and  I  disposed  of  three  buttered  health 
[  146] 


Speaking  of  Angels 

biscuits  and  two  hot  doughnuts  apiece,  the  whole 
made  interesting  by  the  very  good  coffee  which  I 
myself  made  over  an  oil  stove;  in  the  deep  coun- 
try, wise  housekeepers  ask  no  crack-of-dawn  ex- 
ploits from  any  cook,  no  matter  how  greatly 
underworked.  The  doughnuts  down,  we  worked 
easily  and  steadily  until  my  normal  family  break- 
fast, at  which  I  sat  down  with  appetite.  No  loaf- 
ing, however!  At  eight,  Apollos  and  I  were  in  the 
studio  again,  working  till  noon.  Thus  Apollos 
posed  six  hours,  and  Phineas  four. 

From  the  first,  I  tried  to  work  in  a  little  fa- 
therly counsel  for  Apollos  during  the  pose.  "That 
knee  just  a  bit  to  the  left,  please,  and  the  rear 
hoof  as  far  back  as  you  can  get  it.  Fine!  Well, 
you  know  you  're  in  luck,  up  here  in  the  country 
air,  along  with  a  lad  like  Phineas!  Not  that  he 
poses  any  better  than  you;  no  one  does.  But  his 
manners  are  certainly  good,  are  n't  they?" 

"Are  they,  sir?" 

I  asked  myself  whether  Apollos  was  perhaps 
jealous  of  his  more  fortunate  co-worker.  His 
face,  however,  showed  only  a  perfect  Apollonian 
calm,  combined  with  a  gratifying  attention  to 
business.  It  was  a  kneeling  pose,  you  remember; 
and  those  who  have  never  knelt  much  can't  know 
I  I47l 


Speaking  of  Angels 

what  grit  it  takes,  when  long  drawn  out.  I 
thought  it  wiser  to  defer  advice  to  a  more  con- 
venient season.  Next  morning,  when  I  was  work- 
ing on  a  comparatively  easy  place,  I  happened  to 
say  to  Apollos  that  Phineas  talked  remarkably 
well  for  a  boy  of  his  age.  Apollos  preserved  his 
pose  and  made  no  reply.  I  pressed  the  subject. 

"Perfectly  good  talker,  sir,  just  as  you  say," 
replied  Apollos,  squirming  ever  so  slightly  with 
the  foot  I  was  not  modelling,  "but  of  course  you 
hire  us  to  pose,  not  talk.  I  rather  fancied  you 
liked  the  place  kept  quiet." 

"Righto,  boy.  But  sometimes  a  little  conver- 
sation helps  the  slow  minutes  to  skip  by." 

"That  depends,  sir." 

"On  what?" 

"Oh,  on  who  does  the  talking,  and  what  is 
said." 

The  reply  caught  my  fancy.  I  wondered  what 
response  Phineas,  that  excellent  conversational- 
ist, would  have  made;  I  decided  to  put  the  same 
question  to  him,  in  the  afternoon.  Unfortunately, 
his  posing  happened  to  be  less  satisfactory  than 
usual  that  day,  and  it  thrust  me  out  of  the  mood 
for  easy  converse  with  him.  Besides,  he  himself 
had  so  much  to  say  of  his  ambitions,  prospects, 
[  148] 


Speaking  of  Angels 

and  great-grandfathers,  that  I  did  not  care  to  add 
anything  to  the  welter  of  talk.  A  few  days  later, 
however,  I  found  occasion  to  remind  him  that 
with  his  inheritance  —  I  meant  blue  blood,  of 
course  —  he  was  fortunate  in  being  able  to  help 
those  boys  with  whom  he  came  in  contact. 

"I've  tried  to  help  Apollos  with  his  manners," 
he  replied,  "but,  confidentially,  it's  rather  up- 
hill work." 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  Apollos  does  n't  appear  so 
badly.  Seldom  speaks  unless  spoken  to,  and  then 
pretty  sensibly,  I  find.  Besides  "  (here  I  thought  a 
helpful  suggestion  might  be  in  order),  "his  posing 
is  so  absolutely  perfect  that  anything  else  he  does 
perhaps  seems  imperfect  in  comparison." 

"Yes,  poor  fellow!  Pity  that  just  posing 
should  be  what  a  fellow's  fitted  for,  is  n't  it?  For 
my  part  — " 

"For  your  part,"  I  interrupted  rather  testily, 
"if  you  will  kindly  keep  that  left  leg  of  yours  — 
well,  ever  so  slightly  reminiscent  of  what  it  was 
when  you  began  to  pose  it  for  me,  I  shall  be  most 
appreciative."  I  had  never  before  spoken  like 
that  to  the  scion  of  a  Signer,  but  I  saw  he  needed 
it.  It  was  gradually  being  revealed  to  me  that 
long  descent  is  by  no  means  the  main  desideratum 
[  149  1 


Speaking  of  Angels 

in  a  model.  Phineas  had  developed  a  rather  un- 
usual and  uncanny  gift  for  slumping  in  his  pose;  — 
making  it  easier  and  easier  for  himself,  minute  by 
minute,  so  that  at  the  end  of  the  half-hour,  there 
was  really  nothing  left  that  was  of  the  slightest 
use  to  me.  I  had  to  do  my  work  from  knowledge, 
instead  of  from  Phineas.  Of  course,  most  models 
have  this  infirmity  of  self -protection,  but  Phineas 
could  give  all  comers  cards  and  spades  in  the  game 
of  slumping. 

Still,  in  the  excellent  stances  I  had  with  Apollos, 
I  would  sometimes  enlarge  upon  Phineas's  ad- 
vantages. Once  I  expressed  a  hope  that  Apollos 
was  profiting  duly  by  the  companionship. 

"It  profiteth  me  nothing,"  was  the  unexpected 
reply.  "Phineas  talked  me  over  once.  Never 
again,  sir!" 

"How  so?" 

"Oh,  nothing  of  any  importance,  really.  A  silly 
fool  business.  I  could  n't  make  any  one,  an  adult, 
I  mean,  understand  just  how  it  happened." 

"Try  me!  Boy  myself  once." 

A  slow  color  shot  up  over  Apollos's  classic 

torso,  and  flamed  fiercely  in  his  ears.   He  even 

became  white  around  the  mouth,  as  if  the  blood 

had  receded  from  that  part  to  concentrate  in  his 

[  150] 


Speaking  of  Angels 

listening  apparatus.  Then  his  confidence  gushed 
forth,  as  if  long  pent  up. 

"I  wanted  some  money  to  get  my  little  sister  a 
birthday  present.  She'd  been  ill  in  bed  for  five 
weeks,  and  was  peevish  as  a  wasp,  driving  Aunt 
Lise  distracted  asking  for  a  big  doll.  Much  as 
ever  we  could  pay  for  the  doctor  and  medicines, 
let  alone  a  French  doll,  but  I  wanted  to  get  it  for 
her.  She's  the  only  girl  we  have.  Well,  I  was 
walking  by  Flatto's  one  day,  with  Phineas,  and  I 
was  fool  enough  to  say  I  'd  give  my  boots  if  I 
could  get  her  a  beauty  doll  we  saw  there  in  the 
window.  'Gosh,'  says  Phin,  'I  can  tell  you  how 
you  can  earn  that  doll,  on  the  side,  without  work- 
ing.' 'How  so?'  says  I.  'Well,'  says  Phinny, ever 
so  thoughtful,  'a  rich  feller  and  I  got  talking 
about  the  way  girls  paint  up  their  faces,  and  I 
said  men  sometimes  did  it  too.  He  said  rats,  and 
I  bet  him  ten  I  could  prove  it,  and  he  took  me  up 
on  it.  I  was  thinking  about  the  Academy  exhibi- 
tion,' says  Phinny,  'and  I  knew  Mr.  Lucas  was 
sending  his  self-portrait  to  the  show.  But  now,' 
says  Phinny, '  I  've  found  out  that  portrait  was  n't 
accepted;  and  maybe  my  friend  would  n't  ante, 
just  for  a  painted  portrait,  not  a  real  person.  But,' 
says  Phinny,  very  earnestly,  'if  I  could  get  a  reg- 


Speaking  of  Angels 

ular  feller,  like  you,  to  make  up  with  paint,  I'd 
give  him  half  what  I  make;  and  that  would  net 
you  the  five  plunks  for  the  doll.' " 

Apollos  paused  as  if  ashamed  of  "telling."  But 
his  recollections  were  too  much  for  him,  and  upon 
my  encouragement,  he  went  on. 

"Well,  I  fell  for  it.  I  did  n't  stop  to  think  how 
it  would  look;  I  only  knew  the  money  would  look 
good  to  me.  And  I  knew  Phinny  was  a  little 
brother  to  the  rich;  some  of  his  fool-friends  just 
wallow  in  coin.  So  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  we 
went  round  toPhin's  house  for  him  to  do  me. 
He's  in  with  the  set  that  do  private  theatricals, 
and  he  has  all  the  stuff  from  a  rabbit 's-foot  down. 
7  thought  it  would  be  funny  if  he  would  do  my 
nose  good  and  red;  but,  no,  he  just  did  my  cheeks 
and  ears,  and  blackened  up  my  eyelashes,  and  we 
went  right  over  to  the  Academy  exhibition  then 
and  there,  and  met  his  fool-friend.  One  of  the 
artists  had  given  Phinny  tickets  on  account  of  his 
ancestors.  I  had  no  idea  what  I  looked  like. 
People  stared,  of  course,  but  I  thought  that  was 
part  of  the  programme." 

Evidently  a  very  painful  thought  still  lurked 
in  Apollos's  mind. 

"You  got  the  money,"  I  remarked,  casually.' 
[  152] 


Speaking  of  Angels 

"Oh,  no."  Apollos  rapidly  wiggled  all  his  ten 
toes.  "I  threw  it  back  at  him  and  told  him  to  go 
to  Hell  with  it." 

"  For  Heaven's  sake,  why?  " 

Again  a  bright  red  suffused  the  boy's  face. 

"  When  I  got  up  to  the  L  station  and  looked  in 
the  mirror,  I  saw  for  the  first  time  that  he'd  made 
me  up  to  look  like  a  girl ! "  Clearly  the  horror 
of  that  realization  had  not  yet  departed  from 
Apollos.  "It  was  a  low-down  trick,  and  I  beat 
him  up  for  it." 

With  a  new  respect  for  the  kneeling  boy,  I 
watched  the  blush  die  away  from  his  countenance; 
it  lingered  last  of  all  in  his  ears.  How  often  I  my- 
self had  repeated  that  stupid  tattle  about  Apollos 
and  his  ears  at  the  Academy!  I  dare  say  I  may 
have  turned  red  myself,  when  I  recognized  how 
small  the  talk  was,  and  what  a  small  thing  had 
started  it.  Perhaps  Apollos  observed  this,  for  he 
continued,  "You  know  what  it  is  to  have  a  habit 
of  blushing,  don't  you?  The  more  you  try  not  to, 
the  more  it  happens.  Well,  Phineas  noticed  it  on 
me,  my  Canadian  ears,  you  know,  that  first  day 
we  met  in  your  New  York  studio.  So  he  thought 
he  could  put  one  over  on  me.  And  I  '11  say  he 
did." 

[  1531 


"So  I  suppose  you  two  down  there  at  the 
boarding-house  never  speak  as  you  pass  pie?" 

"Sure  we  do!  What's  the  use  of  holding  a 
grudge?  We've  got  on  fine  since  we  fought."  A 
big  generous  smile  swept  the  shadows  from  his 
eyes.  "  And  the  best  of  it  was,  Ellie  got  her  doll, 
after  all.  Who  from?  From  Phinny,  to  be  sure. 
Said  he  could  n't  feel  right  about  it,  any  other 
way,  so  I  let  him."  Having  been  a  boy  myself,  I 
saw  the  point;  and  I  marvelled  once  more  at  the 
intricacies  of  boy  nature. 

At  that  moment,  I  was  modelling  a  hand,  one 
of  the  important  details,  as  it  happened.  Apollos 
had  superb  hands,  strong  and  sinewy,  with  those 
noble  bones  we  sculptors  are  always  looking  for. 
To  my  surprise,  I  found  that  I  was  actually  copy- 
ing the  youth's  hand,  every  bit  of  it.  And  that's 
something  one  can't  often  do;  one  generally  has 
to  juggle  with  Nature,  in  the  interest  of  Art.  It 's 
part  of  the  game,  especially  if  you  are  doing 
angels. 

"Say,  'Polios,  what's  the  idea,  manicuring 
your  nails?  Thank  Heaven  you  do,  as  far  as  I  'm 
concerned;  all  I  have  to  do  is  to  copy  that  left 
hand  of  yours." 

Not  a  trace  of  embarrassment  appeared  in  the 
I  154] 


Speaking  of  Angels 

lad's  reply.  "I'm  very  pleased  if  it's  right,  sir. 
You  see,  I  studied  it  all  out,  from  the  hands  on 
Michael  Angelo's  David.  I  saw  that  most  of  you 
sculptors  use  that  type  of  hand,  nails  all  trued  up, 
and  so  on;  and  I  concluded  I'd  better  dress  the 
part,  as  long  as  I  was  on  the  job." 

So  then,  the  manicuring  was  but  a  part  of  the 
amazing  Apollonian  thoroughness !  —  the  same 
thoroughness  that  I  had  remarked  in  him  when  he 
went  out  one  afternoon  with  an  old  gun  of  mine, 
and  brought  me  back  three  pairs  of  wings  —  a 
sapsucker's,  a  crow's,  and  a  goose's.  The  goose's 
wings,  in  particular,  he  told  me  in  his  serious, 
smiling  way,  might  perhaps  give  me  some  sugges- 
tion for  the  other  angel,  "  the  Phineas  feller."  He 
was  right,  too.  In  making  an  angel's  wing,  one 
does  not  copy  a  goose's,  but  one  gets  light  from 
on  high. 

"I  suppose  you  mean  to  go  on  with  this  work, 
don't  you?  Posing,  studio  jobs,  and  so  on?  " 

Apollos  opened  wide  eyes.  "Not  I,  sir!  For 
me,  it 's  only  a  pis-aller,  if  you  '11  excuse  my  saying 
so.  Faute  de  mieux,  you  know." 

I  was  astonished,  for  I  had  no  idea  that  Apollos 
knew  a  word  of  French,  even  the  tags  he  had  just 
used.  I  thought  I  would  be  jocose. 
I  155] 


Speaking  of  Angels 

"  What  are  you  going  to  do,  then?  Teach  lan- 
guages? " 

"I've  tried  that,"  replied  the  best  model  I  ever 
saw,  "but  I  found  it  unsatisfactory.  You  see 
my  mother  was  French,  born  in  Strasbourg.  So 
while  she  lived,  we  always  spoke  the  three  lan- 
guages at  home,  meal-times;  English  for  break- 
fast, German  for  dinner,  and  French  for  supper. 
Father  liked  it  so,  and  we  boys  could  n't  look 
back  on  a  time  when  it  was  n't  so.  I  had  the 
French  conversation  classes  for  two  terms  at  the 
Elmdale  High  School,  and  I  got  on  fine  until  one 
of  the  trustees  wanted  the  job  for  his  wife's  sister. 
So  he  went  ahead  and  found  out  that  I  was  a 
minor,  and  had  me  fired." 

"What  a  shame!" 

"Why,  no,  it  did  n't  matter  much.  If  I  might 
rest  this  elbow  just  a  moment,  it  seems  a  bit 
dead  —  I  meant  to  quit,  anyway.  There  was 
nothing  in  it  for  me,  it  was  n't  leading  to  any- 
thing I  wanted." 

"Well,  what  was  it  you  wanted?" 

Apollos  made  no  answer  other  than  that  slow 

blush  of  his,  swarming  all  over  his  face  and  finally 

demobilizing  in  his  ears.    For  a  moment,  his 

whole  figure  had  an  expression  that  would  have 

[  156  ] 


Speaking  of  Angels 

been  wistful  in  a  smaller  lad;  even  as  it  was,  there 
was  something  very  touching  about  it.  I  could 
only  hope  that  his  ambition,  however  humble, 
was  at  least  honorable.  I  reminded  myself  that 
I  must  not  expect,  in  a  Canadian  boy,  the  same 
lofty  impulses  that  would  quicken  the  blood  of  a 
Signer's  descendant. 

Meanwhile,  my  work  with  Phineas  was  going 
rather  badly.  I  could  not  teach  his  aristocratic 
spirit  to  get  down  to  brass  tacks.  His  posing  be- 
came worse  instead  of  better.  Before  long,  I 
found  myself  doing  over  again,  every  morning, 
from  Apollos,  all  that  I  had  bungled  in  doing, 
every  afternoon,  from  Phineas.  It  occurred  to  me 
that  perhaps  I  was  too  tired,  in  the  afternoon,  to 
do  justice  to  Phineas,  and  that  possibly  Phineas's 
pose  was  the  more  difficult  one.  However, 
when  I  changed  about,  things  were  still  worse.  I 
realized  at  last  that  my  sprig  of  nobility  was  a 
hindrance  rather  than  a  help.  What  to  do?  I  had 
promised  him  work  through  the  summer.  If  I 
should  pay  him  handsomely  and  discharge  him, 
with  his  part  of  the  bargain  unfulfilled,  I  should 
write  myself  down  an  easy  mark  for  models  —  a 
reputation  no  serious  artist  seeks.  It  would  be 
complicity  after  the  crime.  Besides,  Apollos  might 
I  157] 


'  Speaking  of  Angels 

well  become  discontented,  on  beholding  the  re- 
wards of  the  ungodly. 

Toward  the  middle  of  the  summer,  the  tension 
became  too  great.  Precious  as  time  was,  with 
that  ironclad  contract  haunting  my  dreams,  I 
saw  that  perhaps  I  should  gain,  in  the  end,  if  I 
should  leave  my  studio,  for  a  double-size  week- 
end, and  go  a-fishing  from  Friday  to  the  follow- 
ing Tuesday.  I  was  working  in  plastiline  instead 
of  clay,  and  I  could  safely  leave  my  angels,  with- 
out fear  of  their  drying  up  on  me  as  soon  as  my 
back  was  turned.  The  holiday  might  not  hurt  the 
boys,  either.  Apollos  had  stuck  valiantly  to  his 
"pis-aller"  job;  perhaps  Phineas  would  do  better 
after  a  few  days'  change;  at  any  rate,  I  told  my- 
self, he  could  n't  do  worse.  In  that,  however,  I 
was  mistaken. 

II 

BY  Thursday  midnight,  my  motor  had  already 
borne  me  north  two  hundred  miles  from  my 
studio  and  all  its  works.  Some  men  sit  by  a 
brookside  to  think,  but  I  go  fishing  to  forget.  I 
wanted  an  oblivious  antidote  against  art  and 
angels  in  art.  But  my  respite  was  brief.  Sunday 
night,  on  returning  to  the  mountain  inn  at  the 
I  158] 


Speaking  of  Angels 

head  of  the  lake,  carrying  with  me  a  gorgeous 
string  of  trout  that  I  knew  would  win  me  the 
plaudits  of  all  guests  at  Monday's  breakfast,  I 
was  confronted  with  a  telegram. 

Studio  destroyed.    Come  as  soon  as  you  can. 

PHINEAS  STICKNEY 

For  a  second,  I  had  an  hallucination;  I  saw  also 
the  words,  "Angels  in  ashes.  Contract  ironclad." 
But  I  waved  that  aside;  and,  I  hardly  know  why, 
my  utter  dismay  was  soon  followed  by  a  sort  of 
exhilaration,  the  exhilaration  a  fellow  feels  when 
he  suddenly  has  to  make  a  fresh  start,  and  knows 
he  has  strength  for  it.  No  Sunday  trains  served 
those  remote  God-fearing  parts;  I  must  return  as 
I  came.  A  few  years  before,  my  hill  and  home  had 
been  struck  by  lightning,  but  no  damage  had  been 
done,  except  to  a  drinking-glass  and  the  cook's 
Thursday  afternoon  corsets.  Turning  my  motor's 
nose  homeward,  I  wondered  whether  the  lightning 
had  returned  to  finish  a  work  thus  timidly  begun. 
More  likely  fire,  though!  Did  Apollos  smoke, 
after  all?  Or  Phineas?  My  curiosity  was  almost 
equal  to  my  consternation. 

All  night  long,  my  runabout  raced  up  hill  and 
down  dale,  sometimes  beside  a  moonlit  brook, 
sometimes  through  clean,  sweet  forests,  and 
[  1591 


Speaking  of  Angels 

again  along  dusty  country  roads  with  straggling 
farmhouses  fast  asleep,  not  even  giving  a  dream 
to  my  troubles!  Grateful  guests  at  the  inn  had 
pressed  upon  me  loaves  in  exchange  for  my  fishes, 
and  by  way  of  a  solitary  breakfast  among  the 
morning  mists,  I  disposed  of  an  incredible  number 
of  sandwiches  as  well  as  all  the  hot  coffee  in  my 
own  miracle-bottle.  I  propitiated  my  engine  for 
the  last  lap. 

The  day  had  not  lost  its  freshness  when  I 
reached  the  foot  of  my  hill,  and  strained  my  eyes 
for  a  glimpse  of  the  disaster.  To  my  surprise,  the 
big  barn  studio,  as  far  as  I  could  judge  from  the 
road,  was  still  intact.  But  it  was  in  the  back  part 
that  my  angels  were!  And  when  I  had  at  last 
finished  rounding  that  interminable  uphill  bend 
over  the  roots  of  the  elm  trees,  I  saw  that  there 
was  no  longer  any  back  part.  There  was  only  a 
pile  of  charred  timbers. 

At  a  little  distance  stood  a  metal  garage,  one  of 
those  ugly,  useful  structures  that  invite  scoffing 
from  all  persons  of  taste.  It  was  untouched  by 
the  fire.  The  door  was  open.  I  could  see  Phineas 
just  within.  Beyond  Phineas,  stretched  out  flat 
on  those  trestles  I  had  been  grumbling  about  for 
years  because  the  carpenters  never  took  them 
I  '60] 


Speaking  of  Angels 

away,  were  my  angels,  uncovered,  and  looking, 
to  the  casual  eye,  as  good  as  new.  I  was  glad, 
then,  that  I  knew  how  to  thank  God.  And  before 
long,  I  was  glad,  according  to  the  custom  of  my 
tribe,  to  get  a  new  light  on  my  angels.  Sculptors 
are  like  that.  They  would  go  through  fire  and 
water  to  get  a  new  light,  it  seems. 

"  Your  work?  "  I  asked  the  question  of  Phineas, 
and  pleasantly  enough. 

The  boy's  eyes  filled.  "Yes,  sir." 

"  Where  'sApollos?" 

"In  bed,  burned  arm,  broken  leg  —  Oh,  dear, 
oh,  dear!"  With  this  childlike  exclamation,  the 
son  of  a  hundred  Stickneys  broke  down  utterly. 

Between  sobs,  Phineas  made  his  foolish  city 
boy's  confession.  He  had  merely  made  a  fire  to 
roast  some  corn  in  the  ear,  and  meaning  to  be  ex- 
tremely careful,  had  kindled  his  sticks  close  up 
against  an  old  stone  wall  a  few  feet  away  from  the 
studio  with  the  angels.  Yes,  he  had  spoken  about 
it  to  Apollos  the  day  before,  and  Apollos  had 
warned  him.  But,  such  is  the  stubbornness  of  the 
sons  of  the  Revolution,  he  had  felt  perfectly  sure 
it  would  be  safe.  His  distress  was  so  evident  that 
I  refrained,  at  that  tune,  from  pointing  out  what 
a  consummate  jackass  he  was. 
[  161  ] 


"Before  I  knew  it,"  he  went  on,  "the  wind 
veered  clean  around,  and  the  fire  burst  through 
the  wall  quicker 'n  chain  lightning,  and  began 
climbing  the  dry  grass  on  the  bank  up  toward  the 
studio.  And  all  those  last  year's  leaves!  You 
would  never  believe  it!" 

"Oh,  yes,  I  would,"  I  retorted,  a  little  bitterly. 
"I  am  still  in  my  right  mind." 

"  Apollos  was  in  the  garage,  tinkering  on  a  bust 
he  brought  in  there  when  you  went  away,  and  I 
was  planning  to  surprise  him  with  the  roast  corn. 
So  I  hollered  to  Apollos,  and  Apollos  hollered  to 
Henry,  and  Henry  telephoned  to  the  town-hall  to 
ring  the  bell  like  blazes.  And  in  ten  minutes  half 
the  men  in  the  village  were  here  with  brooms  and 
shovels." 

"But  who  got  out  the  angels?  Or  did  they  soar 
out,  under  their  own  steam?  " 

"Well,"  said  Phineas,  "they  never  could  have 
come  through  if  it  had  n't  been  for  Apollos! 
'Those  angels  have  just  got  to  be  saved,  if  any  of 
us  are,'  says  Apollos.  So  he  grabbed  up  a  saw 
and  a  screw-driver,  and  what  the  saw  could  n't 
do,  the  screw-driver  could.  He  worked  like  light- 
ning, Apollos  did.  'Easy,  boys,  easy,'  he  kept  say- 
ing, calm  as  if  he  was  down  at  the  boarding-house, 
[  162  ] 


Speaking  of  Angels 

eating  griddle  cakes.  'It'll  be  quite  a  disappoint- 
ment for  the  boss,  anyhow,  the  best  we  can  do,' 
says  Apollos.  So  while  the  rest  of  the  fellers  were 
fighting  the  fire  outside  with  brooms  and  spades 
and  inside  with  whatever  water  they  could  get, 
and,  gosh,  it  was  n't  much,  Apollos  got  Prince 
Eugene  Gage,  the  town  drunkard,  you  know,  and 
One-Eye  Sims  that's  supposed  to  keep  the  toll- 
house, and  that  hulkingest  one  of  the  two  big 
Beecher  boys,  and  the  three  of  them,  along  with 
him  and  me,  we  got  those  angels  out  somehow, 
safe  enough,  and  not  much  jarred,  really,  sir. 
And  we  carried  them  into  the  garage  here,  and 
stuck  'em  on  the  horses,  as  you  see." 

"  Good  work,  my  lad,  but  how  about  Apollos?  " 
"Well,  you  know  how  thorough  Apollos  is.  He 
suddenly  remembered  that  the  half-size  study 
was  in  back  there,  right  in  the  midst  of  the  fire; 
and  he'd  heard  you  say  you  wanted  to  keep  it  and 
send  it  down  to  New  York.  We  could  n't  stop 
him.  He  got  away  from  us,  went  in  there,  slid  the 
thing  quick  down  onto  the  little  green  truck,  and 
pushed  it  out  over  the  sill  just  in  time.  Only  not 
quite  in  time.  That 's  how  he  got  his  broken  leg. 
And  his  shirt  had  just  begun  burning  on  him 
when  he  fell  over  himself.  The  doctor  says  the 
[  163  1 


Speaking  of  Angels 

arm  will  be  all  right  inside  a  week,  but  the  leg 's  a 
longer  job." 

I  had  rather  lost  interest  in  Phineas,  before  I 
went  away,  but  now  I  found  myself  changing.  I 
was  glad  to  see  that  boy's  complete  loyalty  to 
Apollos;  recognition  of  valor  had  apparently  left 
no  room  for  the  customary  Stickney  complacency. 
I  had  noted,  too,  that  the  aristocratic  Stickney 
countenance  was  somewhat  disfigured  by  a  red 
wound  across  the  upper  lip,  but  I  forbore  to  ask 
the  boy  if  he  got  it  eating  roast  corn.  Within 
the  garage,  I  took  careful  account  of  my  angels. 
Their  celestial  composure  was  scarcely  shaken,  it 
would  seem.  If  only  I  could  get  them  upright 
again,  as  successfully  as  Apollos  and  his  band  of 
ne'er-do-weels  had  laid  them  flat,  all  would  yet  be 
well,  and  the  name  of  Jefferson  unmuddied. 

By  the  end-window  of  the  garage,  hi  what 
chanced  to  be  a  good  north  light,  I  saw  a  bust; 
the  bust  that  Apollos,  of  all  persons  in  the  world, 
had  been  modelling  from  memory  in  the  dark 
privacy  of  his  farmhouse  attic  room,  and  imme- 
diately on  my  departure,  had  brought  to  the 
garage  for  an  orgy  of  peaceful  study.  Even  from 
the  distance  at  which  I  stood,  I  perceived  that  the 
thing  was  a  startlingly  good  likeness  of  myself; 
I  164  1 


Speaking  of  Angels 

myself  in  a  somewhat  heroic  aspect,  to  be  sure, 
but  still  unmistakably  me,  almost  life-size,  in 
clay.  My  me-ness  stuck  out  all  over  it.  It  really 
gave  me  a  start,  offered  me  an  ideal  to  live  up  to. 
I  don't  say  it  was  finer  than  anything  of  Houdon's 
or  Rodin's.  I  merely  say  it  was  amazing  for  a  boy 
who  had  had  no  instruction  save  the  crumbs  he 
had  picked  up  while  posing.  The  lad's  secret  ambi- 
tion was  quite  evident  to  me  now.  But  for  my 
own  rather  heartless  absorption  in  my  Three 
Angels,  I  might  have  guessed  it  before.  I  felt 
ashamed. 

"Phineas,"  I  remarked  very  seriously,  and  I 
suited  the  action  to  the  word,  "I  take  off  my  hat 
to  Apollos!" 

Phineas  answered,  with  a  sincerity  not  to  be 
doubted  in  a  Stickney ,  "  So  do  I,  and  I  always 
shall.  That  is,  if  he  keeps  on  like  this!" 

The  fire  gave  me  a  new  light  on  my  models.  I 
learned  to  my  surprise  that  my  aristocrat  was 
something  of  a  carpenter.  He  was  full  of  plans 
for  rebuilding  the  destroyed  wing  of  my  studio, 
and  even  drew  everything  out  carefully  on  paper 
in  scale,  and  very  creditably  too.  I  saw  that  if  I 
could  get  a  few  men  at  once,  it  would  take  but  a 
short  time  to  rig  up  a  temporary  refuge  for  finish- 
[  165  ] 


Speaking  of  Angel. 

ing  my  angels.  Late  haying  being  over,  the  thing 
was  somehow  accomplished;  Phineas  worked  like 
a  boy  possessed;  and,  as  Apollos  was  soon  hob- 
bling about  very  capably  on  crutches,  we  had  a 
studio-warming,  during  which  the  two  lads  super- 
intended the  replacing  of  the  angels,  by  the  efforts 
of  their  former  crew,  Prince  Eugene  Gage,  the 
town  drunkard,  One-Eye  Sims  that's  supposed 
to  keep  the  toll-house,  and  the  hulkingest  Beecher 
boy.  Those  three  were  the  scum  of  the  village. 
Hence  I  often  say,  In  an  emergency,  don't  scorn 
the  scum. 

But  the  oddest  part  of  the  adventure  was  this. 
And  I've  not  yet  finished  marvelling  at  it.  After 
the  two  angels  were  really  up  again,  and  Phineas 
and  Apollos  and  I  stood  staring  at  them,  Apollos, 
with  that  little  air  of  authority  that  nobly  earned 
crutches  sometimes  confer,  suddenly  said  out, 
quite  loud,  "But  there's  nothing  to  do  to  them, 
really,  Mr.  Jefferson!  They're  done!"  And  after 
one  good  glance,  my  inward  eye  told  me  that  he 
was  absolutely  right.  I  might  never  have  known 
that  they  were  done,  however,  if  I  had  kept  on 
working  at  them,  and  if  I  had  not,  in  despair, 
gone  a-fishing!  That  very  night,  I  telegraphed 
for  my  plaster-moulder. 

I  166] 


Speaking  of  Angels 

Did  both  boys  become  sculptors?  Oh,  no,  noth- 
ing so  tragic  as  that.  Apollos  is  the  sculptor,  but 
Phineas  went  into  architecture;  he  knows  more 
about  stone  walls  than  he  did  before  the  fire. 
Since  the  fire,  the  two  are  fast  friends,  and  work 
together  when  they  can.  They  are  the  two  young 
fellows  who  lately  captured  the  commission  for 
that  big  Unknown  Heroism  monument  the  papers 
have  been  printing  pictures  of.  I  think  they'll 
make  good,  too.  But  you  never  would  have 
guessed  it  would  end  that  way,  if  you  had  seen 
them  together  at  the  Academy.  The  rosy-eared 
Apollos  1 


•  THE  MARQUIS  GOES 
DONKEY-RIDING 

I 

MY  great-grandmother  was  by  no  means  an 
accomplished  French  scholar.  Was  yours? 
And  even  in  English,  my  great-grandmother's  spell- 
ing was  far  from  faultless.  In  those  well-thumbed 
receipt-books  of  hers,  written  by  her  own  hand, 
and  still  beautifully  legible,  you  will  note  that  she 
sometimes  doubles  the  t  in  butter,  and  sometimes 
not;  she  generally  gives  an  h  to  sugar,  and  seldom 
allows  an  egg  more  than  one  g  to  stand  on.  But 
the  far-flung  fame  of  her  cooking  did  not  suffer  in 
consequence.  And  had  her  prowess  in  languages 
and  in  orthography  been  equal  to  her  skill  in  the 
household  arts  of  her  day  (spinning,  weaving, 
brewing,  and  the  like),  my  cousin  Felix  might 
never  have  known  the  joyous  adventures  of  a 
collector  of  Lafayette  silver.  For  frankly,  it  was 
my  great-grandmother,  who,  owing  to  a  slip  in 
her  French,  first  sent  the  marquis  on  his  donkey- 
riding.  Lafayette  in  Egypt!  Cousin  Felix  never 
rested  until  he  got  to  the  bottom  of  the  matter. 
[  168] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

Felix  Bradford,  you  must  know,  is  one  of  the 
great  color  manufacturers  of  the  age.  Tube  colors, 
of  course.  There's  more  in  the  business,  and  per- 
haps less  in  the  tubes,  than  one  would  expect. 
But  Felix  is  a  thoroughly  good  sport;  and  twenty 
years  ago,  finding  that  he  was  making  a  comfort- 
able income  from  the  art  of  painting  (other  men's 
painting),  he  decided  to  become  a  collector  of 
something  besides  money.  Colonial  silver,  for 
example;  and  he  hoped  to  include  among  his 
treasures  the  lost  Lafayette  porringer,  from 
which  as  a  child  he  had  often  been  spiritually  fed. 

He  had  never  seen  that  porringer,  though  our 
grandmother  Bradford  had  frequently  described 
its  glories,  and  had  told  us  just  how,  at  the  age  of 
eight,  she  had  lost  the  better  part  of  it  forever. 
It  had  been  bought  in  Paris,  by  her  seafaring 
father,  a  petty  officer  under  Paul  Jones.  Very 
likely  the  museums  would  not  call  it  a  porringer, 
for  it  was  larger  and  finer  than  most  vessels  in 
that  class;  besides,  it  had  a  cover.  Grandmother 
Bradford,  sinful  little  child  though  she  once  was, 
had  not  lost  the  cover.  Felix  as  a  boy  had  often 
seen  it  and  even  handled  it,  delightedly  running 
his  fingers  over  its  fluted  silver  dome,  topped  by  a 
flaming  torch  wrought  in  silver,  with  touches  of 
I  169] 


,  The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

gold  inlaid  among  the  flames.  He  had  an  exquisite 
joy  in  caressing  that  silver-gilt  finial.  Sometimes, 
to  vary  his  beautiful  imaginary  pain  in  being 
burned  by  it,  he  would  wet  a  thumb  and  forefinger 
before  touching  it,  though  he  knew  Grandmother 
Bradford  did  not  approve  the  gesture.  Evidently 
Cousin  Felix  was  early  marked  for  some  impor- 
tant contact  with  the  fine  arts. 

Felix  was  a  little  boy  of  six  when  that  great 
American  awakening,  the  Philadelphia  Centen- 
nial, showed  the  world  as  by  a  lightning-flash  just 
how  backward  we  were  in  matters  of  art.  It  was 
annoying,  but  it  had  to  be  admitted,  that  all  those 
peoples  across  the  water  (who,  we  strongly  sus- 
pected, did  not  keep  the  Ten  Commandments 
nearly  so  well  as  we  did)  were  our  superiors  in 
the  creation  of  beauty.  From  that  time  onward, 
Felix  felt  the  influence  of  our  shamed  national 
gropings  in  art,  and  groped  with  the  best.  I  say 
nothing  for  his  early  pencil  copy  of  a  work  called 
Pharaoh's  Horses,  a  copy  finally  completed  after 
prodigious  efforts  on  the  part  of  an  anaemic  Sat- 
urday morning  drawing-teacher  to  keep  him  at 
the  job  for  many  wreeks.  Nor  can  I  endorse  the 
lady's  method,  the  first  important  step  of  which 
was  completely  to  cover  a  steel  engraving  of 
I  170  ] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

Pharaoh's  Horses  with  tissue  paper,  a  small 
square  portion  of  this  being  torn  off  at  the  begin- 
ning of  each  session,  to  disclose  the  exact  amount 
of  horseflesh  that  must  be  completed  within  the 
two  hours.  Somehow  the  square  inch  that  Felix 
happened  to  be  producing  at  any  given  moment 
never  seemed  in  itself  to  be  far  wrong;  yet  the 
more  inches  he  completed,  the  less  right  his  copy 
looked.  This  vaguely  troubled  both  teacher  and 
pupil,  but  neither  of  them  knew  what  to  do  about 
it,  except  to  press  on.  Houdon's  celebrated 
maxim,  "Copiez,  copiez,  copiez  toujours,"  has  never 
I  hope,  had  a  more  literal  and  ruthless  application. 
For  years  thereafter,  Felix  could  not  look  upon  a 
4-H  pencil  without  active  loathing. 

But  even  Pharaoh's  Horses,  for  all  their  fiery 
eyes  and  swelling  neck  veins,  could  not  quite 
trample  the  life  out  of  Felix's  love  of  the  beautiful. 
On  rainy  holidays,  with  a  plate  of  ginger  cookies 
at  hand,  he  still  liked  to  peer  inside  grandmother's 
corner  cabinet,  where  she  kept  the  "bug  china," 
the  Mandarin  teacups,  the  thin  silver  teaspoons, 
the  curiously  elaborate  sugar-tongs,  and  the 
sugar-bowl  with  a  castle  on  it.  If  there  were  no 
other  boys  about,  he  would  gladly  listen  to  the 
old  lady's  story  of  the  Lafayette  porringer,  with 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

its  engraving  of  the  marquis  on  donkey-back. 
Lafayette  in  Egypt!  It  was  a  tale  to  invite 
dreams. 

Grandma  Bradford  had  two  quite  different 
ways  of  talking.  When  she  spoke  of  modern 
.  things,  or  read  a  paper  at  the  Ladies'  Circle,  she 
used  her  modern  manner;  but  when  she  talked  of 
old-time  things,  she  generally  dropped  into  a  style 
to  correspond. 

"There  I  set  on  the  front  porch,"  she  would 
say,  "eatin'  my  cold  porridge  out  of  the  porrin- 
ger. I  was  the  only  girl,  and  they  allus  called  it  I 
was  some  indulged.  But  I  guess  folks  would  n't 
call  it  that,  nowadays!  'T  was  a  hot  evenin',  and 
Aunt  Car'line  hed  company,  and  they  wanted  to 
talk  by  theirselves,  so  she  let  me  set  out  on  the 
porch  with  my  supper.  And  when  I  got  it  et,  I 
put  the  porringer  up  onto  the  porch  jest  as  car'ful 
as  I  could,  and  begun  playin'  with  Rover.  He  was 
a  real  young  dog,  Rover  was;  a  puppy,  you  might 
say,  but  a  big  dog,  too.  I  dunno  how  't  is,  but 
dogs  don't  seem  to  come  as  big  now  as  they  did 
then!  And  fust  thing  I  knew,  he  lep'  up  onto  the 
porch,  and  got  that  porringer  into  his  maouth, 
and  rushed  off  downhill,  me  racin'  after  him.  And 
that  was  the  last  our  family  ever  saw  of  it.  And 
[  172] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding     v 

Rover  never  stopped  till  he  got  to  the  brook;  it 
was  roarin'  turrible,  the  brook  was,  'cos  it  had 
be'n  a  rainy  summer;  and  the  more  I  called,  the 
more  he  did  n't  hear,  but  kep'  a-runnin'.  And  he 
run  and  he  run,  all  along  the  brookside,  till  he  got 
to  the  path  that  led  square  up  to  the  Ellicksen- 
ders'  house,  and  then  he  turned  up  sharp  —  " 

Grandma  paused  for  breath,  and  let  Felix  take 
up  the  familiar  tale. 

"And  the  Ellicksenders'  house,"  recited  Felix, 
with  gusto,  "  was  no  better  than  a  den  of  thieves." 

"Yes,  and  jest  then  I  heard  Aunt  Car'line 
callin',  and  back  I  flew  to  the  haouse.  And  when 
she  said,  'Why,  Lydia  Fairlee,  where  is  the  rest 
of  the  porringer? '  —  oh,  my,  wa'n't  I  scairt?  I 
hope  it  will  be  a  lesson  to  you,  Felix,  the  way  I 
was  too  scairt  to  tell  the  hull  truth.  I  was  scairt  o' 
bein'  punished,  so  I  told  a  part-truth,  which  is  a 
near-lie,  same  as  some  boys  I  know  of." 

Felix  reddened,  and  deemed  it  wise  to  advance 
the  story  as  hurriedly  as  possible.  "You  told  her 
you  put  it  up  onto  the  porch,  careful  as  any- 
thing— " 

"Yes,  but  I  didn't  dass  tell  her  Rover  hed 
snatched  the  porringer,  and  was  carryin'  it 
straight  as  a  streak  o'  lightnin'  to  the  Ellicksender 
I  173  I 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

boys.  No,  sir,  as  long  as  I  was  in  my  right  mind, 
I  never  owned  up  a  syllable  of  it  to  anybody! "  A 
note  of  sinful  triumph  rang  in  the  old  lady's  voice. 
"  'T  wa'n't  till  two  years  later  it  all  came  out.  I 
hed  scarlet  fever,  and  was  dretf ul  deleerious,  and 
raved  a  lot  about  Rover  and  the  porringer  and  the 
Ellicksender  haouse;  so  Aunt  Car'line  knew  at 
last  jest  what  happened.  That  sickness  spared 
me  the  rod,  I  guess! "  Grandma  chuckled  at  the 
thought  of  this  immunity,  but  at  once  recollected 
herself.  "No,  Felix,  't  ain't  any  use.  Be  sure 
your  sin  will  find  you  out." 

Again  Felix  squirmed  away  from  any  impend- 
ing moral,  mentally  making  a  note  to  the  effect 
that  he  must  study  ways  to  avoid  scarlet  fever, 
if  not  actual  sin. 

"  But  of  course  't  was  too  late  then  to  accuse 
the  Ellicksenders.  And  one  o'  them,  the  wust 
one,  hed  died  in  jail,  anyhow;  so  you  see,  Felix,  if 
he  did  take  that  porringer,  his  sin  found  him  out, 
too.  The  youngest  boy  turned  out  real  good,  it 
seems.  Grew  up  to  be  a  minister,  real  celebrated, 
too.  Some  younger 'n  me,  he  was." 

But  the  career  of  the  boy  who  "turned  out 
real  good"  had  no  vital  interest  for  Felix.  His 
thoughts  wandered  toward  the  "wust  one,"  the 
I  174] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

one  who  died  in  jail.  Not  that  he  himself  wanted 
to  die  in  jail;  far  from  it.  But  he  certainly  did 
not  want  to  grow  up  to  be  a  minister,  either;  and 
he  hoped  in  his  secret  heart  that  there  might  be 
some  middle  course.  A  most  determined  little 
fellow  was  Felix.  That  day,  while  listening  to  one 
half  of  the  porringer  story,  and  repeating  the 
other,  he  made  up  his  mind  that  when  he  should 
reach  man's  estate,  he  would  get  to  the  bottom  of 
this  Lafayette  business. 

Very  delicately,  he  twirled  the  silver  cover  over 
his  palm,  as  if  it  were  a  kind  of  sacred  top  too 
fine  for  human  nature's  daily  play.  He  flicked 
it  lightly,  connoisseur-fashion,  with  his  handker- 
chief. For  a  second,  he  was  almost  sorry  that  the 
handkerchief,  from  its  nature  and  uses,  had  to  be 
so  grimy.  Then  he  heaved  a  sigh  for  beauty  van- 
ished. I  have  often  thought  that  if  Cousin  Felix 
had  gone  into  poetry  instead  of  paint,  he  would 
have  made  good  in  that,  too. 

"Too  bad  there's  no  bottom  when  there's  such 
a  beautiful  top!  Say,  Grammer,  show  us  the 
drawing  you  made  when  you  were  little." 

Nothing  loath,  Grammer  unlocked  one  of  the 
small  drawers  of  her  cabinet,  and  took  from  it  a 
packet  of  ancient  letters.  In  the  heart  of  the 
I  «75  ] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

packet  was  a  square  of  brownish  paper,  on  which 
was  traced  a  circle  about  six  inches  in  diameter, 
with  two  projecting  lacelike  ears.  One  might  call 
it  a  plan  view  of  the  bowl  of  the  porringer.  Little 
Lydia  Fairlee  had  drawn  it  by  the  simple  expe- 
dient of  laying  the  object  upside  down  on  the 
paper,  and  pencilling  around  the  outline.  Evi- 
dently the  pierced  handles  had  attracted  the 
child,  for  these  had  been  drawn  with  great  care. 
In  the  space  beneath,  she  had  done  her  own  hand, 
by  the  same  process.  Many  a  time  Felix  had  fitted 
his  own  five  fingers  over  that  symbol.  Once  his 
hand  had  been  a  rather  good  fit,  but  of  late,  it  had 
been  growing  steadily  beyond  bounds. 

"Yes,  sir,"  Madam  Bradford  was  saying, 
"  that 's  the  drawin',  and  I  can  assure  you  I  was 
well  cuffed  by  Aunt  Car'line  for  usin'  up  her 
paper.  Those  days,  folks  did  n't  throw  paper 
araound,  the  way  they  do  to-day.  I  suppose,  ef 
I'd  be'n  a  child  these  times,  I'd  'a'  had  Sattidy 
drawin'  lessons,  and  I  hope  I  could  'a'  profited 
by  'em.  But  nobody  ever  gave  me  a  chance  at 
Pharaoh's  bosses." 

Felix  grinned,  guiltily. 

"Anyways,  your  great-grandfather  saved  up 
that  drawin',  pretty  car'ful!  We  found  it  among 
[  176] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

his  papers.  And  when  I'm  through,  I  shall  leave 
it  to  you,  along  with  the  silver  cover.  You're  the 
one  that  loves  lovely  things." 

Felix  was  too  well  used  to  that  reference,  "when 
I'm  through,"  to  feel  it  very  deeply  other  than  as 
a  part  of  the  porringer  story.  But  he  was  an  affec- 
tionate child,  and  there  being  no  spectators,  he 
gave  his  grandmother  the  kiss  she  wanted.  Then 
he  fitted  the  cover  over  the  drawing,  as  he  had 
often  done  before. 

"And  there  was  a  picture  of  Lafayette  on  the 
side  of  the  bottom  part?  " 

Madam  Bradford  suddenly  switched  to  her 
most  modern  style  of  speech.  She  often  took  a 
sly  pleasure  in  disconcerting  her  hearers  by  mak- 
ing these  lightning  changes. 

"An  engraving  is  the  correct  term,  I  believe." 
There  was  a  world  of  prunes  and  prisms  in  her 
tone.  "An  engraving  upon  silver,  executed  in 
Paris.  And  underneath  it  was  engraved,  all  in  the 
French  language,  'Lafayette  in  Egypt.'  Your 
great-grandmother,  who  was  quite  a  French 
scholar  for  those  days,  used  to  translate  it  for  me. 
Very  Frenchy  writing  it  was,  too;  very  Frenchy- 
and  flourishy.  And  in  the  picture,  I  mean  the 
engraving,  there  was  Lafayette  on  donkey-back, 
[  1773 


Tie  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

plain  as  anything,  all  wrapped  up  in  a  big  cloak, 
and  right  alongside  was  a  man,  his  body-servant, 
I  expect,  urging  the  donkey  on.  I  can  see  it  in 
my  mind  to  this  day.  If  I  was  a  drawer,  I  could 
draw  it  for  you." 

Felix  sighed  again,  a  sigh  of  yearning  and  dis- 
illusion. Somehow  donkey-riding,  even  in  Egypt, 
and  with  a  body-servant,  seemed  to  him  rather 
tame  work  for  Lafayette.  He  himself  would  have 
preferred  for  his  hero  something  in  more  heroic 
vein.  He  knew  from  a  picture  in  his  geography 
that  donkeys  went  with  the  Pyramids  and  the 
mouths  of  the  Nile.  Of  course  donkey-riding  is 
well  enough,  in  an  everyday  sort  of  way;  but  was 
Lafayette  an  everyday  sort  of  man?  In  his  heart 
Felix  felt  it  a  pity  that  the  marquis  had  n't  had 
a  go  at  Pharaoh's  horses,  or  their  descendants. 
Once  in  church  the  minister  had  read  out  in  a 
great  voice  something  about  a  Bible  horse,  whose 
neck  was  "clothed  in  thunder."  That  Bible 
horse,  Felix  reasoned,  would  have  been  just  the 
mount  for  Lafayette!  For  a  moment,  the  little 
boy's  mind  even  harbored  a  doubt  as  to  his  great- 
grandmother's  French  scholarship. 

"  Grammer,  are  you  sure  it  was  a  donkey?  Do 
you  remember  the  ears?" 

[  178] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

Madam  Bradford  replied  with  a  majesty  that 
withered  all  doubt,  "I  do.  If  I  was  a  drawer,  I 
could  draw  those  ears  for  you.  Lafayette  in 
Egypt." 

II 

TO-DAY,  Cousin  Felix  himself  hardly  knows  at 
what  age  he  began  to  fit  various  facts  together, 
with  an  accuracy  damaging  to  the  Lafayette 
myth.  If,  as  family  tradition  had  it,  the  porrin- 
ger had  been  ordered  in  Paris  by  our  seafaring 
ancestor,  in  the  year  1779, was  ft  really  likely  that 
at  that  date  Lafayette's  exploits,  either  warlike  or 
otherwise,  either  in  Egypt  or  elsewhere,  were  al- 
ready so  noised  abroad  as  to  be  stock  subjects  for 
the  silversmith's  skill?  Absurd!  "Any  sopho- 
more would  know  better,"  reasoned  the  youth 
Felix;  "even  a  Harvard  man."  But  by  the  tune 
Felix  had  taken  his  degree  at  Yale,  and  was  be- 
ginning at  the  bottom  round  of  the  paint  busi- 
ness, his  interest  in  the  vanished  porringer  had 
become  dormant;  for  many  years  thereafter,  his 
business  career,  his  new  home  and  growing  family 
occupied  his  mind  to  the  exclusion  of  childish 
trifles. 
Nevertheless,  at  the  destined  hour,  his  collec- 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

tor's  passion  overtook  him,  and  was  thenceforth 
to  remain  with  him.  He  began  to  haunt  auction 
rooms,  private  collections,  museums.  Pictures, 
books,  furniture  —  he  loved  them  all;  but  Colo- 
nial silver  was  his  chief  desire.  He  read  much, 
studied  much,  and  even  wrote  a  little,  now  and 
then,  upon  this  subject  paramount.  And  though 
he  scarcely  owned  it,  even  to  himself,  the  missing 
part  of  the  Fairlee  porringer  was  the  central  ob- 
ject of  his  quest.  As  the  years  rushed  on  with 
gathering  speed,  the  by-products  of  this  pursuit 
became  very  considerable;  his  collection  vied  with 
that  of  Lockwood  or  of  Halsey  or  of  Clearwater. 
Silver  tankards  and  platters  were  his;  also  silver 
braziers  and  caudle  cups  and  chocolate  pots, 
silver  ladles  and  buckles  and  patchboxes.  But 
porringers  were  really  his  long  suit,  he  said.  Of 
these,  he  possessed  enough  to  lend  a  score  to  vari- 
ous museums,  and  yet  to  keep  in  his  own  cabinet 
a  more  than  sufficient  number  (all  of  the  middle 
period)  to  serve  as  soup-bowls  for  his  famous 
dinners  of  twelve. 

Naturally  his  delight  in  what  he  had  merely 
whetted  his  longing  for  what  he  had  not.  When- 
ever his  birthdays  impended,  as  they  continued  to 
do  with  annoying  annual  precision,  his  wife  and 
I  180  ] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

the  elder  children  (especially  young  Felicia)  would 
once  more  set  out  hunting  for  "  the  Lafayette 
bottom,"  and  failing  always  in  their  search,  would 
in  despair  purchase  some  costly  and  inadequate 
substitute  for  the  thing  they  sought.  Indeed, 
"Father's  feeling  for  antique  silver,  you  know!" 
had  made  him  no  niggard  with  modern  gold,  and 
his  offspring,  even  in  their  early  youth,  had  their 
many-leaved,  rigorously  inspected  check-books. 
Nor  could  I  ever  see  that  they  were  in  any  way  the 
worse  for  this  indulgence. 

Felix  smiled  happily  enough  when,  on  the 
morning  of  his  fifty-first  birthday,  young  Felicia 
bounded  into  his  study,  and  plumped  down  upon 
his  table  an  ill-favored  bulbous  tankard  of  some- 
what baroque  design;  a  piece  which  she  jubilantly 
declared  was  "a  genuine  John  Cony,"  but  which 
was  really,  as  our  wise  expert  whispered  to  himself 
in  the  midst  of  his  outspoken  praise  and  thanks- 
giving, "no  more  a  Cony  than  I  am  a  king." 

"No  use,  dad,"  said  young  Felicia,  shaking  a 
wise  blonde  head,  in  her  funny  little  perpetual 
morning-glory  way.  "  Mother  and  I  have  given  up 
the  Lafayette  bottom  for  keeps.  We've  searched 
high  and  low  for  the  old  thing,  from  Salem,  Mas- 
sachusetts, to  Baltimore,  Maryland,  and  so  have 
[  181  ]  ' 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

you.  Nothing  doing.  /  don't  believe  there  ever 
was  a  Lafayette  bottom,  anyway!"  This  last 
with  the  air  of  uttering  a  superb  and  daring  heresy, 
possibly  epoch-making  in  the  annals  of  silver- 
collecting  in  America. 

"As  for  that,"  replied  Felix,  whose  self-im- 
posed r61e  it  was  never  to  turn  a  hair  at  the 
opinions  of  youth,  "  I  have  n't  believed  it  myself, 
this  long  time." 

Felicia  started  indignantly.  "Why,  Payrent, 
Pay  rent!  What  do  you  mean  by  such  —  recalci- 
trating? I  thought  you  staked  your  life  on  that 
Lafayette  business!" 

"I'm  afraid  you  have  n't  been  keeping  up  with 
the  times,"  retorted  the  parent.  "For  the  past 
ten  years,  at  least,  I  Ve  discounted  the  tale.  I  've 
been  putting  two  and  two  together,  and  I  really 
don't  see  the  sense  in  trying  to  make  a  baker's 
dozen  out  of  it,  do  you?" 

"Oh,  well,  if  you're  bringing  it  down  to  cold 
mathematics,  father,  I  rather  think  you  're  going 
to  miss  some  of  the  joys  of  your  job!" 

"On  the  contrary,  my  dear  Flickey,  the  joys 
will  be  all  the  keener." 

"Well,  I  wish  you'd  explain  your  change  of 
base." 

[  182] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

"I  have  n't  made  any  change  of  base.  And 
have  n't  I  told  you  a  hundred  times  that  the  true 
collector  should  never  venture  out  of  doors  with- 
out being  armored  in  doubt?  Why,  from  the 
tune  of  dear  Grammer  Bradford's  maunderings 
about  Lafayette  in  Egypt,  when  I  was  a  little 
boy  in  a  wine-colored  plaid  shirt,  I  had  my  mis- 
givings about  the  tale.  It 's  the  doubt  that  makes 
the  chase  interesting.  Of  course,  all  of  us  Brad- 
fords  know  that  our  Fairlee  ancestor  was  with 
Paul  Jones  on  the  ship  Ranger  in  the  harbor  of 
Quiberon  in  1779  when  that  ship  received  the 
first  national  salute  ever  given  to  the  American 
flag  in  Europe." 

Flickey  stifled  a  yawn  behind  her  preposterous 
dinner-ring. 

"So  far,  so  good.  Next,  we  have  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  our  seafaring  grandsire  got  up  to  Paris 
that  same  year,  and  there  ordered  the  Fairlee 
porringer,  the  cover  of  which  I  now  possess,  the 
bowl  being  mysteriously  dog-lost." 

"Yes,  dog-gone  lost,  forever  and  a  day." 

Felix  fingered  the  scrolled  thumb-piece  of  the 

supposed  John  Cony.  "  But  did  n't  you  ever  stop 

to  think,  my  dear,  just  what  Lafayette  was  up  to, 

those  days?  He  was  only  twenty  when  he  came 

[  '83  ] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

over  to  us,  in  1777.  Is  it  at  all  likely  that  he'd 
ever  been  in  Egypt  before  that  time?  Not  enough 
to  notice,  I'll  be  bound!  No,  I  can't  think  he  was 
celebrated  enough  in  1779  to  warrant  having  his 
exploits,  real  or  imaginary,  engraved  on  the  side  of 
a  porringer,  to  make  a  household  word  of  him- 
self." 

"Another  illusion  overboard,"  cried  Felicia 
hopefully,  as  if  pleased  with  a  parent's  progress. 
But  she  departed,  thoughtful. 

"Do  you  know,"  she  announced  to  her  mother, 
afterwards,  "dad  doesn't  really  swallow  that 
Lafayette  stuff,  any  more  than  you  and  I  do?""' 

"Of  course  not,  dearie!" 

"Well,  of  all  the  gay  parental  deceivers,  you 
two  are  the  limit!  You'll  be  saying  there's  no 
Santa  Claus,  next!"  Flickey  flounced  off  in  a 
dudgeon  not  wholly  pretended.  She  was  thought- 
ful, too.  As  her  parents'  interest  in  the  quest 
waned,  her  own  waxed  stronger. 

"The  old  dears  got  a  rise  out  of  me,  all  right," 
she  confided  to  Jimmy  Alexander,  a  Princeton 
boy  who  had  succeeded  in  wresting  forever  from 
Yale  Felicia's  sworn  allegiance,  originally  granted 
to  Harvard,  arid  for  a  brief  hour  wavering  be- 
tween Amherst  and  Columbia. 
[  184] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

"  So  much  depends  upon  where  you  spend  your 
summers,"  Felicia  had  once  ingenuously  re- 
marked; and  not  without  some  anxiety,  her  par- 
ents had  made  a  similar  observation.  However, 
it  was  with  a  certain  feeling  of  relief  that  Felix 
and  his  wife  had  compared  notes  upon  the  sub- 
ject of  Jimmy  Alexander.  Weighed  in  the  balance 
with  every  other  collegian  in  Flickey's  career,  the 
young  man  triumphed  conspicuously.  Inciden- 
tally, he  had  an  interest  in  old  silver,  an  interest 
which  even  the  skeptical  Felix  believed  was 
genuine. 

The  fount  and  origin  of  that  interest  would 
have  been  clear  to  our  cousin  the  collector  could 
he  have  overheard  Flickey  and  Jimmy  in  the 
arbor,  after  a  game  of  tennis.  "I'll  beat  you  to 
it,"  Flickey  was  saying.  "You  find  me  that  La- 
fayette bottom,  and  your  fortune 's  made,  with 
father.  He  tells  us  now,  after  all  these  years,  that 
he  does  n't  believe  there  is  such  a  thing.  But  all 
the  same  there 's  a  look  of  holy  faith  shining  be- 
hind those  shell  rims  of  his.  Say,  Jimmy,  did  you 
ever  notice  how  blue  father's  eyes  are?  They're 
the  eyes  of  a  believer,  every  time!" 

Jimmy  was  too  much  engrossed  with  Felicia's 
eyes  to  spare  a  thought  for  Felix's.  But  the  girl's 
I  185  ] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

suggestion  about  the  Lafayette  bottom  caught 
his  fancy.  An  up-and-coming  lawyer,  such  as  he 
intended  eventually  to  be,  ought  to  be  able  to 
hunt  down  a  silver  bowl;  or  rather,  what  is  more 
to  the  point  with  lawyers,  to  get  some  one  else  to 
do  it. 

"My  Aunt  Amanda  at  Lost  River,"  he  mused 
aloud,  "has  quite  a  little  collection  of  such  tri- 
fles, and  I  'm  sure  she  'd  be  glad  to  advise  — " 

"Your  Aunt  Amanda,  at  Lost  River,"  hooted 
Felicia,  the  morning-glory  willingly  assuming  the 
role  of  owl.  "  Oh,  Jimmy,  you  innocent,  don't  you 
suppose  father  has  been  up  hill  and  down  dale, 
from  Lost  River  to  Newfoundland  Bay,  looking 
for  that  bowl?  Don't  you  know  that  half  the 
dealers  in  New  York  are  out  with  bloodhounds 
seeking  stuff  for  father's  cabinets  to  devour? 
Your  Aunt  Amanda,  indeed!  And  Lost  River! 
Huh!" 

Jimmy  was  nettled,  but  not  defeated.  "All 
the  same,"  he  retorted  stubbornly,  "my  Aunt 
Amanda  is  just  as  good  as  anybody  else's,  and  in 
fact  a  lot  better  than  most;  and  there's  as  good 
fish  in  Lost  River  as  you  can  buy  in  all  New  York. 
And  furthermore,  if  you  don't  mind  my  men- 
tioning it,  my  Aunt  Amanda  is  an  authority  on 
f  186  1 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

Early  American  silver.  You  probably  are  not 
aware  of  the  fact  that  it  was  she  who  wrote  the 
famous  Blakeney  monograph!  Amanda  Alexan- 
der Blakeney  is  her  name." 

Flickey  was  taken  aback  for  a  fraction  of  a 
second.  "A.  A.  Blakeney?  Why,  we  were  brought 
up  on  her!  I  thought  it  was  a  him,  I  did,  really! 
Dad  swears  by  his  Blakeney." 

"Then  why  shouldn't  we  Dodge  up  to  Lost 
River,"  urged  Jimmy,  appeased,  "and  see  auntie 
about  it?" 

Felicia's  eyes  shone,  but  her  words  were  cir- 
cumspect. "Of  course  we  could  Dodge  it  in  your 
car,  or  Ford  it  in  mine;  but  had  n't  we  better  get 
father  and  mother  to  take  us  up  in  the  family 
ark,  with  Priscilla  and  the  children  — ?  " 

"Not  on  your  blooming  passport!  Where  do  I 
come  in,  with  a  deal  like  that?  If  anything  re- 
sults, does  little  Jimmy  draw  the  prestige?  No, 
no,  I  want  to  perform  the  quest  by  myself  — 
with  you,  of  course.  Can't  ask  any  one  else,  my 
runabout  won't  stand  for  it.  After  all,  I'm  fur- 
nishing an  aunt;  and  I  think  I  ought  to  have 
something  to  say." 

"I'll  see  how  mother  feels  about  it,"  vouch- 
safed Flickey.  She  added  to  herself,  "I'll  wear 
[  187] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

my  pink-and-white  stripe,  with  the  rose  blazer. 
But  perhaps  not  the  earrings  —  you  never  can 
tell  about  earrings  — " 

III 

LATE  one  July  afternoon,  Amanda  Alexander 
Blakeney  had  ensconced  herself  with  Queen  Vic- 
toria in  a  shady  corner  of  the  terrace,  and  was 
looking  forward  to  an  hour  of  tranquil  enjoyment 
with  Lehzen's  caraway  seeds,  and  Lord  M.  To 
her  vexation,  the  very  first  paragraph  was  punc- 
tuated for  her  by  footsteps  on  the  brick  walk;  and 
peering  through  the  pine  boughs,  she  spied  a  gay 
young  pair  who  had  evidently  just  descended 
from  a  car,  left  in  quite  the  wrong  place  in  her 
courtyard. 

"I  hope,"  she  said  to  herself,  "it  is  n't  another 
brazen  couple  come  to  ask  if  this  is  a  'gift-shop- 
V-tea-house,'  and  can  they  have  something  wet. 
Well,  they  '11  hear  from  me,  and  — " 

A  brisk  voice  broke  in,  man-fashion. 

"Hello,  hello,  Aunt  Mandy!  Anything  wet  for 
the  weary  prodigal  newy?  " 

"Well,  of  all  things,"  replied  the  great  Museum 
authority  on  silver,  beaming  with  pleasure  upon 
her  favorite  Alexander  nephew.  Lord  M.  was 
[  188] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

readily  enough  forgotten  in  the  vivid  presence  of 
the  young  people,  and  the  subject  of  silver  readily 
enough  approached  with  the  arrival  of  a  tea-tray 
laden  with  various  products  reflecting  credit  alike 
upon  the  collector  and  her  cook.  Mrs.  Blakeney 
was  a  childless  widow,  distinctly  pretty,  with  a 
young  face  framed  by  abundant  white  hair.  In 
her  fresh  lilac  gown  with  its  touches  of  old  lace, 
and  in  her  daintily  buckled  slippers,  of  a  Victorian 
slenderness,  she  was,  as  Felicia  afterwards  de- 
clared, a  "regular  story-book  fairy-godmother 
person."  Old  silver  was  her  love,  her  life,  her 
knowledge.  Everybody's  silver  was  of  interest  to 
her;  she  was  always  ready  to  talk  or  even  to  hear 
others  talk  concerning  caudle  cups  or  apostle 
spoons  or  salt-cellars  or  tankards. 

She  gave  a  delicately  amused  attention  to 
Flickey's  chatter  of  her  father's  quest  for  the 
Lafayette  bottom.  The  young  girl  naturally  felt 
that  her  hostess's  interest  was  due,  in  part,  to  her 
own  pleasing  vivacity  in  telling  the  story  of  the 
child  Lydia,  the  Fairlee  porringer,  Rover,  and  the 
evil  Ellicksenders.  At  the  mention  of  that  name, 
Ellicksender,  Mrs.  Blakeney  started,  and  even 
changed  color;  one  would  have  said  that  a  feeling 
of  indignant  protest  surged  over  her  when  the 
I  189  ] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

"den  of  thieves"  was  blithely  insisted  upon  by 
young  Felicia;  but  the  lady  did  not  interrupt. 

"And  the  fun  of  it  is,"  Felicia  continued,  stim- 
ulated by  the  fact  that  Jimmy  was  admiring  her 
within  an  inch  of  his  life,  while  even  Mrs.  Blake- 
ney  was  spellbound,  "  the  fun  of  it  is,  father  still 
has  the  drawing  his  Grandma  Bradford  made 
when  she  was  a  little  girl.  You  know  she  made  a 
drawing  of  the  Lafayette  bowl  just  by  laying  it 
down  on  paper  and  tracing  around  it,  as  young 
things  do!"  One  would  have  supposed  that  the 
speaker  was  a  thousand  years  removed  from  such 
simplicities. 

"But  that  isn't  all,"  added  Flickey,  taking 
from  her  beaded  bag  a  folded  paper,  and  passing 
it  to  Mrs.  Blakeney.  "What  must  father  do  but 
go  ahead  and  have  half  a  dozen  copies  made  of 
that  old  drawing,  perfect  in  every  detail;  and  he 
has  given  one  to  each  of  us  children,  mother  in- 
cluded, so  that  wherever  we  are,  we  can  always 
be  prepared  to  find  a  porringer  bottom  that  will 
fit  exactly,  if  there  is  such  a  thing.  Regular  Brad- 
ford family  identification  tag,  I  call  it.  Of  course 
father  has  the  top;  but  we've  never  had  any  luck 
in  finding  the  bottom,  though  mother  and  I  have 
hunted  and  delved  and  dug.  Sometimes  the  circle 
[  190  ] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

would  be  right,  or  almost  right,  but  the  handles 
—  oh,  dear!  We  've  looked  at  gorms  of  handles,  all 
of  them  terribly  wrong." 

She  paused  a  moment  to  wonder  whether  she 
had  been  talking  too  much;  she  did  not  wish  to 
appear  the  raw  young  feminine  ignoramus  in  the 
eyes  of  a  person  so  delightful  as  Aunt  Amanda, 
who,  as  Felicia  now  saw,  was  studying  that  draw- 
ing, and  with  a  kind  of  passionate  earnestness, 
too.  The  expert's  face  was  itself  a  study;  doubt, 
amazement,  and  recognition  were  to  be  seen 
struggling  there.  The  polite  interest  had  become 
acute. 

Flickey,  jubilantly  aware  that  as  usual  she  was 
making  a  success  of  her  conversation,  was  in- 
spired to  further  efforts.  In  imitation  of  her 
father's  most  discriminating  manner,  she  con- 
tinued, "Of  course,  from  the  collector's  point  of 
view,  we  don't  attach  any  undue  importance  to 
the  Lafayette  myth,  and  — " 

"Neither  do  I,"  observed  Mrs.  Blakeney,  with 
unexpected  decisiveness.  "If  you'd  both  care  to 
come  and  look  at  some  of  my  things,  perhaps 
you  '11  see  why  not." 

The  boy  and  girl  followed  the  lady  into  her 
gray-panelled  drawing-room,  fresh  and  delicately 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

fragrant  with  the  spice  of  July  pinks  nodding 
from  crystal  vases.  It  seemed  to  Felicia  that  she 
had  never  before  entered  a  room  that  was  at  once 
so  simple  and  so  sophisticated,  so  withdrawn  from 
the  world,  yet  so  inviting  to  a  guest.  Mrs.  Blake- 
ney,  no  less  than  Felicia,  carried  a  beaded  hand- 
bag; but  Mrs.  Blakeney's,  Felicia  subsequently 
reported  to  an  attentive  father,  made  her  own 
look  like  thirty  cents. 

Mrs.  Blakeney's  bag  held  a  key,  with  which  she 
opened  a  highboy,  gleaming  discreetly  from  a 
nook  just  beyond  the  fireplace.  Its  shelves  were 
laden  with  treasure;  and  Flickey,  although  long 
inured  to  the  surprises  that  a  collector  can  spring 
upon  his  family,  exclaimed  with  joy  before  those 
marshalled  riches.  For  Felicia,  like  her  father  be- 
fose  her,  was  fated  to  pursue  beauty;  even  her 
girlish  mistakes  —  her  collection  of  athletic  col- 
legians, for  example,  her  amethystine  earrings, 
her  overwrought,  overworking  dinner-ring  in  all 
its  preposterousness  —  resulted  from  her  thirst 
after  loveliness  rather  than  from  her  vanity. 
Jimmy  himself  was  to  her  largely  one  last  pure 
product  of  the  beautiful.  In  Mrs.  Blakeney's 
drawing-room,  before  the  highboy  and  its  spoils, 
her  eyes  filled  with  tears  of  thankfulness  for 
[  192] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

beauty.  She  felt  that  the  ranks  of  silver  vessels 
beaming  and  gleaming  upon  her  had  in  some 
mysterious  way  gathered  into  themselves  and 
greatly  multiplied  all  over  their  surfaces  all  possi- 
ble beauty  from  all  known  worlds,  only  to  reflect 
it  back  upon  those  who  were  fortunate  enough  to 
be  near.  Not  only  the  faded  rose  of  the  hangings 
and  the  dim  gray  of  the  panelling  and  the  dusky 
orange  outline  of  the  spinet  were  reflected  wink- 
ingly  from  those  silver  shapes;  it  seemed  to  her 
that  the  very  fragrance  of  the  pinks  and  the 
breath  of  summer  itself  were  wafted  to  her  by 
silver  voices.  Flickey  sometimes  passed  for  flip- 
pant; but  this  was  not  her  flippant  day.  Indeed, 
she  was  startled  out  of  a  mood  that  was  partly 
pleasure  and  partly  prayer  by  Aunt  Amanda's 
matter-of-fact  remark,  — 

"My  French  stuff,  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries.  I  keep  it  locked  because  —  oh,  well, 
there  are  just  a  few  trifles — Jimmy,  reach  me 
down  that  top  piece,  will  you,  please?  The  one 
at  the  right  of  the  alms  basin." 

With  a  certain  grave  excitement,  Mrs.  Blake- 

ney  had  already  placed  Felicia's  drawing  upon 

a  little  table;  she  smoothed  out  the  folds  of  the 

paper,  especially  those  that  crossed  the  lacelike 

[  193] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

handles.  Then,  with  but  a  casual  glance  at  the 
delicately  wrought  bowl  that  Jimmy  put  into  her 
hands,  she  set  it,  with  dramatic  exactness,  over 
the  outline  traced  by  the  child  Lydia. 

Each  one  of  the  trio  felt  for  a  moment  the 
touch  of  a  bygone  day.  There  could  be  no  doubt 
whatever  that  the  lost  piece  of  silver  was  found. 
Unless,  indeed,  as  the  young  lawyer's  mind  pro- 
fanely suggested,  those  old  boys  made  such 
things  by  the  gross,  like  the  green  spectacles  that 
Moses  bought !  But  the  surmise  was  too  grotesque 
for  utterance.  Even  with  his  slender  knowledge  of 
the  silversmith's  art,  he  could  discern  that  the 
Fairlee  porringer  was  no  machine-made  product. 
It  had  been  created  by  many  touches,  but  by  few 
hands;  perhaps  by  only  one  pair  of  hands,  and 
that  a  master's.  Felicia's  eyes  (not  wholly  un- 
trained, however  subject  to  occasional  error) 
rested  admiringly,  even  reverently,  on  a  master- 
craftsman's  work. 

She  turned  toward  Mrs.  Blakeney.  "I  feel 
just  as  if  you  had  taken  down  a  receiver,  and 
asked  me  to  listen  into  it,  and  that  I  heard  a  voice 
say,  oh,  ever  so  long-distance!  'This  is  little 
Lydia  speaking.'" 

Jimmy,  too,  was  thoughtful.  "But  where  does 
[  194  ] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

Lafayette   come  in,  I  wonder?     Lafayette   in 
Egypt?  " 

Aunt  Amanda  smiled,  picked  up  the  bowl,  and 
pointed  out,  just  below  the  rim,  a  tiny  engraving 
of  a  long-eared  beast,  bearing  a  cloaked  figure, 
while  another  personage  trudged  at  the  side. 
Palm  trees  and  a  pyramid  completed  the  scene. 
How  strange  that  any  one,  above  all  a  God-fear- 
ing Fairlee,  could  ever  have  failed  to  recognize 
the  Bible  story  of  Mary  and  Joseph,  fleeing  with 
the  Child!  Many  curves  and  scrolls  enclosed  this 
specimen  of  the  graver's  art,  and  among  these 
could  be  discerned,  in  the  flourishy  French  writ- 
ing of  which  Grandma  Bradford  had  often  spoken, 
the  legend  — 

La  Fuite  en  Egypte 

For  a  collector,  Mrs.  Blakeney  was  certainly 
sportsmanlike,  yes,  magnanimous.  We  called  it 
broad-minded  when  she  gave  to  Jimmy  Alex- 
ander's bride,  as  a  wedding-gift,  her  "Flight  into 
Egypt"  piece;  an  object  so  tenderly  cherished  by 
her  that  she  had  never  even  made  mention  of  it  in 
any  of  her  monographs,  but  had  kept  it  unspotted 
from  the  world,  in  her  own  collection.  She  had 
always,  and  with  reason,  considered  it  an  Alex- 
ander heirloom  to  which  she  was  justly  entitled, 
I  195  1 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

through  the  bequest  of  her  grand-uncle,  Judge 
Alexander.  She  knew,  however,  that  the  Alexan- 
ders, like  most  of  us,  had  had  ups  and  downs;  she 
knew  that  one  branch  of  the  family,  had  been  pro- 
lific in  good-for-nothings,  some  of  whom  had 
fallen  so  low  as  to  misspell  the  family  name  for  a 
whole  generation,  writing  it  Ellicksender,  when 
they  wrote  it  at  all.  Though  she  doubted  the  jus- 
tice of  calling  the  humble  Ellicksender  home  a 
"den  of  thieves,"  she  nevertheless  believed  it 
probable  that  Judge  Alexander's  "La  Fuite  en 
Egypte"  porringer  had  come  into  his  family's 
possession  in  some  vague,  unexplained  way, 
rather  than  by  purchase.  For  Judge  Alexander's 
father,  Dr.  Phineas  Alexander,  that  pillar  of  the 
Presbyterian  faith,  had  originally  been  a  mere  El- 
licksender, so-called;  he  it  was  who  had  "turned 
out  real  good,"  and  so  had  failed  to  win  the  in- 
terest of  either  Felix  or  myself,  in  our  childish 
days.  As  Mrs.  Blakeney  said,  "The  ironies  of 
Time  certainly  do  iron  out  everything,  if  you 
wait  long  enough";  and  it  was  Dr.  Alexander, 
alias  Ellicksender,  who  had  lifted  up  the  fallen 
fortunes  of  his  family  to  their  former  lofty  place 
in  American  history. 

Felicia  is  really  a  kindly  little  soul.   When  I 
I  196] 


The  Marquis  goes  Donkey-Riding 

went  to  see  Cousin  Felix  after  the  wedding,  I  was 
not  surprised  to  find  that  on  the  ground  of  safety 
first,  she  insists  that  the  Lafayette  bottom  shall 
remain,  during  her  father's  lifetime,  remarried 
to  its  fluted,  flame-topped  cover.  The  icuelle  is 
easily  the  pride  of  the  collector's  heart.  "Of 
course  I  have  costlier  pieces,"  quoth  Felix,  "but 
none  so  dear  to  me  as  this." 

We  grinned  at  each  other  as  he  repeated  his 
boyhood's  gesture,  wetting  a  thumb  and  forefin- 
ger before  he  touched  the  flame. 


THE  FACE  CALLED  FORGIVENESS 

THE  little  dinner  was  a  masterpiece.  From 
hail  to  farewell,  there  had  been  no  falling- 
ofif  in  quality;  the  crystal  chalices  of  liquid  topaz 
that  heralded  the  feast  (or  shall  I  say  plainly,  the 
cocktail-glasses?)  were  not  more  graciously  cut 
than  the  quips  of  the  final  speech  of  congratula- 
tion. Guests,  viands,  vintages,  and  starry  flowers 
had  been  chosen  by  the  law  of  hospitality  wedded 
to  the  spirit  of  beauty.  The  purse  they  had  be- 
tween them  was  not  unduly  large,  but  it  had 
been  joyously  and  wisely  spent. 

It  was  an  artist's  dinner  given  by  an  uncle  to  a 
nephew,  a  dinner  in  honor  of  an  honor.  Twenty 
years  before,  Steven  Grant  had  received  the 
coveted  Gold  Medal  for  Sculpture;  to-day,  a  like 
mark  of  distinction  had  been  awarded  to  his 
favorite  nephew,  Gerald  Weldon.  Steven  was  a 
bachelor,  and  nephews  counted.  What  more  nat- 
ural than  a  dinner  of  reunion  and  rejoicing? 

There  were  ladies  present;  and  some  of  them 
had  satisfied  alike  their  decorative  and  their  hero- 
worshipping  instincts  by  sending  in  advance  to 
I  198] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

the  house  of  their  host  two  lengths  of  wide  ribbon 
of  cloth-of-gold,  with  a  command  that  both  host 
and  guest  of  honor  should  use  them  to  bind  about 
their  necks  the  beautifully  sculptured  tokens  of 
their  greatness.  Very  ample  and  splendid  is  that 
famous  gold  medal.  A  little  weighty  for  festal 
wearing,  indeed;  but  to  refuse  would  have  been 
churlish,  and  uncle  and  nephew  had  adjusted  their 
adornments  with  the  ah-  of  men  who  do  not  mean 
to  dodge  any  part  of  the  day's  work.  Having 
done  that,  they  promptly  forgot  the  big  bright 
plaques  on  their  chests,  except  when  playfully  re- 
minded of  them  by  the  lady  who  had  conceived 
the  idea,  and  who  basked  gladly  in  the  thought  of 
her  originality. 

It  was  indeed  an  evening  to  remember;  but, 
just  like  an  evening  to  forget,  it  had  to  come  to  an 
end.  The  last  and  loveliest  lady,  revealing  the 
exact  amount  of  lacy  stocking  demanded  by  fash- 
ion, had  with  Gerald's  aid  tucked  up  her  slender 
glittering  trail  within  her  glass  coach;  the  last 
and  most  uninteresting  gentleman  had  been  sped 
clubward.  Uncle  and  nephew  went  up  the  broad 
stairs  to  talk  it  all  over  in  Steven  Grant's  den,  a 
great  orderly  panelled  room  always  very  dear  to 
young  Gerald. 

I  199  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

Steven  Grant's  main  studio,  being  a  sculptor's, 
was  naturally  doomed  to  the  basement  of  his 
house.  The  second-floor  den  was  not  precisely  a 
studio,  though  works  of  art  had  been  created 
there.  It  was  a  room  not  quite  like  a  library,  yet 
with  plenty  of  space  for  books,  and  books  for  the 
space;  a  room  that  was  a  bit  larger  than  a  smok- 
ing-room, and  rather  less  elegant  than  a  drawing- 
room;  comfortable  chairs  abounded  and  cheerful 
tones  prevailed,  evidently  in  complete  amity  with 
a  pau:  of  dim,  priceless  tapestries  that  seemed  to 
know  all  and  pardon  all  in  both  furniture  and 
folk.  It  was  a  room  in  which  old  memories  and 
new  conveniences  were  happy  together;  a  bachelor 
had  somehow  managed  it  so.  As  years  went  by, 
Steven  Grant  became  increasingly  glad  that  the 
McKim,  Mead  and  White  panelling  of  the  late 
eighties  had  piously  respected  the  delicate  acan- 
thus cornice  of  the  early  forties.  He  often  said 
that  he  was  the  only  artist  in  New  York  whose 
career  had  begun  and  would  end  under  the  same 
roof. 

You  would  have  taken  uncle  and  nephew  for 
a  pair  of  brothers,  one  silvery  and  one  golden. 
Evening  dress  and  the  bright  decorations  em- 
phasized the  resemblance.  Both  men  were  tall, 
[  200  ] 


The  Face  catted  Forgiveness 

slender,  clean-shaven.  Steven  Grant  carried  his 
sixty  years  lightly,  as  artists  often  do,  while 
Gerald  at  thirty  sometimes  showed  a  seriousness 
in  accord  with  his  honors  rather  than  with  his 
years.  His  forehead  was  already  higher  than  his 
uncle's;  both  men  chuckled  over  that,  but  natu- 
rally Uncle  Steve's  chuckle  was  heartier.  Gerald 
slouched  a  little,  after  the  custom  of  his  genera- 
tion; this  made  him  seem  more  blase  than  he 
really  was.  Steven  Grant  was  straight  as  a  pine 
tree;  this  gave  him  a  challenging  look  that  people 
liked.  The  ties  of  blood  and  their  pursuits  bound 
the  two  together  in  a  harmony  that  would 
scarcely  have  borne  out  the  theories  of  Shaw, 
Samuel  Butler,  and  other  dispraisers  of  the  Family. 

That  night,  they  were  like  a  pair  of  girls  in  their 
wish  to  live  the  dinner  over  again,  with  the  added 
joy  of  uncensored  comment.  "We'll  get  our 
golden  halters  off,"  said  Uncle  Steve, "  and  browse 
at  our  ease." 

"Wasn't  Mrs.  Storms  the  limit?"  laughed 
Gerald.  "Talk  about  the  immodesty  of  our 
maidens!  Strikes  me,  Uncle  Steve,  your  genera- 
tion is  fully  as  mad  as  ours." 

"  Don't  judge  all  dowagers  by  one,"  urged  the 
other,  turning  on  the  light. 

[   201    ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

Gerald  stopped  short  in  the  midst  of  a  jesting 
answer,  forgetting  both  maidens  and  dowagers  as 
he  suddenly  saw  over  his  uncle's  familiar  hearth 
something  he  had  never  seen  there  before;  the 
cast  of  a  beautiful  head,  palely  tinted. 

"Why,  Uncle  Steve,"  he  cried,  "you  have  it 
too,  that  face  called  Forgiveness  1" 

"Is  that  its  name?"  asked  Steven  Grant 
quietly. 

"I  don't  really  know,  but  it's  the  only  name 
I  've  heard  given  to  it.  I  never  saw  any  cast  of  it 
till  yesterday,  coming  home  from  my  trip  West. 
I  had  an  hour  before  my  train  left,  so  I  ran  in  to 
take  a  look  at  the  Museum.  Say,  those  Middle- 
Westerners  are  alive,  all  right!  Priceless,  that 
Museum!  And  just  as  I  was  leaving,  my  eyes 
fell  on  this  wonderful,  wonderful  thing.  Seeing  it 
was  the  big  adventure  of  my  whole  trip.  Its 
beauty  has  haunted  me  ever  since." 

"Take  down  my  copy,  if  you  like,"  said 
Grant. 

"Oh,  how  exquisitely  you've  colored  it,  Steve- 
dear!  No  one  can  beat  you  in  such  things. 
You've  brought  out  every  beauty,  somehow. 
And  it  suggests  both  dawn  and  twilight."  Gerald 
passed  his  fingers  with  appreciative  tenderness 

[  202   ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

over  the  broad  brow  of  the  face  called  Forgive- 
ness, and  went  on,  with  animation. 

"At  the  Museum,  there  was  a  nice  old  cabinet- 
maker, German  type,  fitting  a  frame  for  their 
cast.  Recent  addition,  it  seems.  He  looked  in- 
telligent, so  I  asked  him  what  it  was.  He  said  he 
did  n't  know  exactly;  it  had  n't  been  'catalocked' 
yet.  But  a  poet  friend  of  his  had  said  it  ought  to 
be  called  the  Rose  of  Pardon.  Then  he  told  me, 
musingly,  that  it  made  him  think  of  the  Virgin  at 
Nuremberg." 

"That  might  well  be,"  observed  Uncle  Steve, 
pushing  over  the  matches. 

"  Well,  then,  next  a  little  Italian  girl  came  along, 
with  her  sketch-book.  She  saw  my  interest,  and 
showed  me  the  astonishingly  good  pencil  sketch 
she  had  made  from  the  cast.  So  I  asked  her  what 
it  was,  where  it  was  from.  She  said  she  did  n't 
know;  she  understood  that  it  was  called  Forgive- 
ness. Then  she  looked  me  all  over  to  see  what 
manner  of  man  I  was,  and  shyly  said  that  to  her 
it  was  very  beautiful,  like  the  Madonna  at  Peru- 
gia." 

"I  can  see  what  she  meant,  of  course." 

"But  that  is  n't  the  half,  dearie!  Just  then  a 
French  painter,  evidently  a  Friday  lecturer  or 
I  203  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

something  of  the  sort,  came  in  with  a  class  of 
young  boys.  Lord,  how  they  burbled,  all  over 
the  place!  One  of  the  kids  asked  him  the  question 
that  was  trembling  on  my  lips,  and  he  answered 
that  he  was  n't  sure,  but  that  he  believed  the  cast 
was  called  Forgiveness.  It  was  rather  touching 
to  hear  him  repeat  very  reverently,  in  his  pro- 
nounced 'Parrhisian'  accent,  'Forgive  us  our 
trespasses.'  The  boys  felt  it,  too,  and  they  were 
very  quiet  for  a  moment.  Then  the  Frenchman, 
with  a  bright  glance  at  me  (guessing  no  doubt 
that  I  too  was  an  artist),  added  that  for  him,  it 
was  like  the  Virgin  of  the  Visitation,  so  miracu- 
lously saved  out  of  the  destruction  at  Reims." 

"It  seems  to  me  more  beautiful  than  that, 
even,"  interposed  the  elder  man,  "but  I  can  un- 
derstand his  feeling." 

"Exactly!  And  then,  last  of  all,  a  real  live 
American  art  student  came  hustling  up,  just  the 
kind  you  see  here  at  the  League,  only  more  so. 
He,  too,  said  the  face  was  called  Forgiveness, 
adding  briskly,  'Perfect  American  type,  don't 
you  think?  Beats  Gibson,  what?"1 

"They  were    all    more    or   less   right,    you 
thought  ?  "    Steven  Grant's  eyes  were  fixed  curi- 
ously on  Gerald's  face,  still  bent  over  the  cast. 
[  204  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

Gerald  looked  up.  "Yes,  they  were  right,  each 
in  his  own  way.  You  know,  Stevedear,  it  all  re- 
minded me,  in  a  beautifully  wrong-side-out  fash- 
ion, of  the  different  witnesses  in  Poe's  murder 
story,  you  remember?  " 

"You  mean  the  one  where  men  of  different  na- 
tionalities all  hear  an  ape  chattering  in  the  dark, 
and  not  knowing  in  the  least  what  it  is,  each  one 
is  sure  it's  some  language  not  his  own?" 

"That's  right!  The  Frenchman,  who  doesn't 
know  Spanish,  says  it's  Spanish,  the  Englishman, 
who  does  n't  understand  German,  says  it 's  Ger- 
man, while  the  Italian,  who  does  n't  know  English, 
feels  sure  it's  English,  and  so  on.  But  those 
people  at  the  Museum  were  all  so  splendidly  dif- 
ferent from  that!  Each  one  wanted  to  guard  and 
to  claim  for  his  own  race  the  heritage  of  beauty 
breathing  from  the  mask.  The  German,  the  little 
Italian  girl,  the  French  painter,  the  American  art 
student  —  they  were  all  alike  in  this.  They  found 
in  that  cast  Nuremberg,  Perugia,  Reims,  Chicago ! " 

"'Beats  Gibson,  what?'"  mocked  Steven 
Grant. 

"Do  you  think  it's  a  cast  from  nature?"  asked 
Gerald,  still  intent  on  the  face.  "Perhaps  a 
death-mask?  " 

[205  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

The  other  nodded.  "Without  doubt,  a  death- 
mask." 

"But  there's  nothing  of  the  sharpness  of  death 
about  it,  is  there?  It  seems  a  face  unprofaned  by 
earthly  suffering." 

Again  Steven  Grant  gazed  at  his  nephew,  as  if 
waiting  for  the  eyes  of  young  manhood  to  see 
more. 

"Strange,"  pursued  Gerald,  "that  a  mere 
death-mask  can  mean  so  much  to  living  men. 
There 's  Eraser's  Roosevelt,  and  the  Lincoln,  and 
the  Dante  that  used  to  be  in  everybody's  library, 
and—" 

A  silence  fell  between  the  two.  Surely  Mrs. 
Storms,  the  lady  who  was  the  limit,  was  far  from 
their  thoughts.  The  dinner,  that  masterpiece, 
had  faded  from  the  foreground. 

"I  never  told  you,"  said  Gerald,  abruptly, 
"how  I  longed  to  make  a  death-mask  of  father, 
when  he  died  there  in  London,  away  from  you 
all.  I  wanted  to  preserve  —  and  to  show  to  you 
yourself,  Stevedear!  —  the  look  of  peace  that 
came  upon  him.  As  a  sculptor,  I  knew  how,  of 
course.  Every  kid  studying  sculpture  has  made 
casts  —  from  life,  anyway.  But  when  mother  saw 
what  I  was  about,  she  trembled  so  violently  I 
[206] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

could  n't  go  on,  in  the  presence  of  her  suffering. 
And  I  trembled,  too.  I  Ve  never  told  you  about 
it,  because  I  was  ashamed  of  my  weakness,  or 
whatever  it  was!  Well,  since  then,  I've  never 
even  tried  to  make  a  death-mask!  People  send  for 
me,  of  course,  and  I  often  go,  when  they  seem  to 
need  a  friendly  presence.  But  it's  some  moulder 
who  does  the  work,  not  I.  I  can't  seem  to  bring 
myself — " 

He  set  the  cast  on  the  table  beside  him,  still 
conning  its  planes  and  shadows.  Again  the  silence 
of  understanding  enveloped  uncle  and  nephew, 
until  Steven  Grant  said,  as  if  in  answer  to  a  ques- 
tion, "Well,  yes;  it  was  much  the  same  with  me. 
I  never  made  but  one  death-mask.  Just  one. 
There  was  no  way  out." 

"How  was  that?" 

"It  happened  when  I  was  younger  than  you 
are,  so  I  could  n't  be  expected  to  have  much 
sense,  could  I?  You  trembled,  because  it  was 
your  father.  I  trembled,  because  it  was  the  girl 
I'd  loved,  and  in  a  sense,  lost." 

"Oh,  I  could  understand!"  And  Gerald,  think- 
ing of  that  most  lovely  lady  with  the  glittering 
train,  stretched  out  a  sympathetic  hand. 

"A  very  beautiful  girl  she  was,  Anita  Vaughn! 
[  207  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

The  pride  of  our  young  circle.  I  made  the  mistake, 
*f  it  was  a  mistake,  of  introducing  my  best  friend 
to  her.  After  that,  I  had  no  show  whatever. 
They  fell  in  love." 

"Hard  luck,  for  you,  anyway!" 

"Yes,  and  a  shock  to  my  conceit,  too.  In  a  way, 
it  was  one  of  the  sacrifices  I  made  to  art.  I'd 
been  moving  Heaven  and  Hell  to  get  that  Eman- 
cipation group  of  mine  well  along.  I  did  n't  want 
to  ask  Anita  to  marry  me  until  I  had  proved  my 
earning  power,  and  that  group  would  have  settled 
things.  Your  gramper,  as  you  know,  did  n't 
think  much  of  sculpture,  and  I  was  shy  about 
asking  him  to  shell  out.  So  I  waited  and  worked, 
and  in  the  meantime,  —  ah,  well,  it  was  all  simple 
enough.  She  preferred  my  friend  to  me,  as  well 
she  might  —  " 

"I  don't  know  about  that,"  bristled  Gerald. 

"No,  you  don't,  but  I  do.  You  see.  it  was 
Janvier." 

The  younger  man  started.  "Not  Janvier,  the 
famous  Dr.  Janvier!" 

"Yes,  the  Dr.  Janvier.    And  no  finer  fellow 

ever  lived.  I've  been  thankful  ever  since  that  I 

did  n't  let  his  luck  in  love  stand  between  us  as 

friends.  Oh,  of  course,  I  sulked  in  my  studio  a  few 

[208] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

weeks,  and  took  on  a  deep  cynicism  about  life  and 
love.  But  nobody  seemed  to  notice  my  airs,  so  I 
gave  'em  up,  and  picked  out  the  prettiest  wed- 
ding-present I  could  find  for  Anita." 
"And  of  course  you  had  your  work  — " 
"Indeed  I  had!  My  career  was  very  much  on 
my  mind,  those  days!"  He  smiled  at  young  am- 
bition, and  dexterously  flicked  a  lengthened  cigar 
ash  into  the  fireplace.  "But  I  suffered,  too,  don't 
think  I  did  n't  suffer!  And  strange  as  you  may 
find  it,  that  pair  cemforted  me.  To  be  sure,  it 
never  works  out  so,  in  books;  but  it  was  so,  with 
us.  The  Janviers  had  me  with  them  often,  after 
their  marriage.  As  I  look  back  on  it,  I  see  that 
it  was  all  far  more  beautiful  than  I  could  know, 
then.  They  were  rare  souls,  both." 
"Did  Janvier's  fame  come  early  in  life?" 
"  Yes,  but  he  was  too  busy  and  quixotic  to  take 
much  note  of  it.  I  first  met  him  when  I  was  mak- 
ing my  studies  for  that  confounded  Emancipa- 
tion group,  and  we  became  friends  at  once,  be- 
cause of  my  subject.  He  was  interested  in  the 
welfare  of  the  negroes,  and  gave  up  a  lot  of  his 
time  to  charitable  work  among  them.  He  used  to 
bring  me  different  types  of  colored  men  as  models ; 
I  Ve  often  told  you  how  I  studied  thirty-five  dif- 
[  209  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

ferent  darkies  for  those  reliefs  on  the  pedestal. 
In  our  leisure,  when  we  had  it,  Janvier  and  I 
would  discuss  racial  traits,  and  so  on." 

"New  Yorker?" 

"Yes,  but  of  Canadian  ancestry.  His  father 
was  one  of  the  early  lumber  kings,  and  left  him  a 
lot  of  money;  otherwise,  he  could  n't  have  given 
so  much  unpaid  service  among  the  negroes.  I 
never  knew  a  human  being  so  frantically  possessed 
with  the  idea  of  justice  for  all  the  world." 

"  His  wife  sympathized?  " 

"Oh,  Lord,  yes!  Whatever  he  did  was  perfect 
in  her  sight.  Strange,  too,  because  she  was  a 
Louisiana  girl,  whose  family  had  lost  their  all 
through  the  Civil  War.  And  of  course  her  ideas 
about  the  negro  race  were  not  in  the  least  like  his. 
How  could  they  be?  Ah,  well,  Anita  Janvier,  my 
lost  Anita  Vaughn,  was  certainly  a  shining  ex- 
ample of  that  motto  there,  under  your  feet!" 

Gerald  picked  up  the  bellows  from  the  hearth- 
rug, and  studied  its  carven  legend,  as  he  had  often 
done  when  a  child.  "'Amor  Omnia  Vincii'  Love 
conquers  all." 

"Love  surely  had  his  hands  full,  in  her  case. 
Just  fancy  the  prejudices  Anita  Janvier  had  to 
overcome,  before  she  could  enter  into  her  hus- 

[   210  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

band's  work  as  she  did!  She  told  me  once,  with 
that  wonderful  smile  of  hers,  that  she  was  glad 
she  had  been  brought  up  on  a  plantation,  because 
understanding  negroes  so  much  better  than  Dr. 
Janvier  could,  she  could  save  him  from  the  sort 
of  mistakes  most  Northerners  made." 

"Did  she  win  out?"  laughed  Gerald. 

Steven  Grant  did  not  answer  directly,  but  con- 
tinued in  musing  recollection. 

"Franklin  Janvier  had  a  house  and  office  in 
Tenth  Street,  just  a  few  doors  from  my  studio 
here.  We  saw  each  other  constantly,  and  kept  in 
touch  with  each  other's  work.  I  was  surprised, 
however,  when  he  took  on,  as  office  assistant,  a 
young  surgeon  just  graduated  from  a  foreign 
school,  a  man  who  looked  like  a  Spaniard,  but 
who  had  a  trace,  oh,  a  mere  trace,  of  negro  blood. 
Pleasant  fellow,  too;  very  gifted  and  modest,  and 
with  an  attachment  for  Janvier  that  amounted  to 
idolatry,  all  told.  A  doctor  born,  Janvier  said. 
His  grandfather  was  a  noted  English  surgeon 
who  came  out  to  the  West  Indies  in  the  old  days. 
Well,  Charles  Richmond  was  a  fixture  in  Frank's 
office  before  Anita  came  to  live  in  the  big  Tenth 
Street  house.  She  accepted  him  just  as  simply  as 
she  accepted  all  the  rest  of  her  new  life.  But  she 

[211    ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

told  her  husband,  very  frankly,  that  Dr.  Rich- 
mond's strain  of  the  darker  blood,  however  neg- 
ligible for  us  Northerners,  was  perfectly  evident 
to  any  one  brought  up  among  negroes." 

"Southerners  often  say  such  things,"  said 
Gerald,  "but  I  never  know  quite  all  they  mean, 
do  you? " 

"  We  tried  to  make  her  explain.  It  was  a  little 
of  everything;  just  this  and  that;  hair,  lips,  nails, 
palms,  of  course!  And  a  certain  indescribable 
smooth  fullness  under  the  skin,  a  rounder  build  of 
the  eyeball,  a  more  springing  curve  of  the  lashes, 
and  so  on.  Janvier  was  even  then  getting  to- 
gether the  data  for  that  famous  book  of  his  on 
'  Ethnic  Details,'  and  he  used  to  encourage  Anita 
in  such  observations,  and  check  them  up.  One 
could  n't  help  admiring  her  astonishing  acuteness 
and  probity.  The  three  of  us  would  often  com- 
pare notes  about  young  Richmond,  but  never 
with  malicious  intent,  I  assure  you.  And  though 
Anita  always  treated  him  with  the  respect  she 
knew  was  due  him,  it  sometimes  fell  short  of  what 
he  longed  for." 

"The  Moor  was  haughty,  then?" 

"Haughty  enough,  but  by  no  means  a  Moor, 
any  more  than  you  arc.  His  eyes  were  blue,  and 
I  212  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

really  lighter  than  yours,  my  boy.  With  a  queer 
shine  in  them,  sometimes!  I  was  sorry  for  him, 
and  so  was  Anita.  But  Janvier,  with  his  obses- 
sion about  equality  and  justice,  sturdily  refused 
to  see  that  there  was  anything  to  be  sorry  about, 
except  our  nasty  human  point  of  view.  He  gave 
a  lot  of  the  care  of  his  colored  patients  to  Rich- 
mond, who  did  nobly  by  them,  too.  Only,  by 
some  mysterious  instinct,  they  always  recognized 
hint  as  one  of  them.  And  it  hurt  him,  clean 
through  and  through.  How  that  boy  suffered! 
He  had  real  genius,  we  knew.  And  I  suppose  this 
helped  Janvier  to  put  up  with  Richmond's  occa- 
sional frantic  outbursts  against  his  fate.  We 
used  to  call  them  his  cyclones  of  the  soul,  not 
dreaming  that  a  similar  expression  was  to  be  in- 
vented long  afterward.  These  storms  of  passion 
always  left  him  crumpled  up  into  nothingness 
before  Janvier,  Anita,  even  myself!  I  tell  you, 
Gerald,  the  man's  agonies  were  atrocious.  He 
had  a  kind  of  gallant  courage,  too,  for  all  his 
self-abasement;  you  would  be  pretty  dull,  if  you 
could  n't  see  the  sublimity  of  it.  After  every 
outbreak,  and  the  subsequent  surrender,  he  would 
painfully  pick  up  the  pieces  of  himself,  and  put 
them  together  again  in  a  dazed  sort  of  way,  and 
[2.3  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

next  day  devote  himself  to  his  work,  more  single- 
mindedly  than  ever.  Janvier  was  his  chosen  pat- 
tern and  example,  in  that." 

"But  perhaps  the  poor  chap  worked  too  hard," 
suggested  Gerald. 

"Exactly!  And  there's  where  Janvier  and  I 
were  wrong,  not  to  have  known  it.  Anita,  with  a 
far  finer  vision  than  we  had,  often  warned  us  that 
the  bent  bow  was  strung  too  tight.  But  we 
could  n't  see  it  so;  men  are  blind,  sometimes,  in 
the  heat  and  burden  of  the  day.  Richmond  was 
six  feet  tall,  and  broad  in  proportion.  A  magnif- 
icent physique!  That's  what  we  went  by.  We 
laughed  at  Anita's  fears  —  accused  her  of  plan- 
tation-coddling. And  there  was  a  lot  to  be  done, 
too,  that  year  after  the  Janviers  were  married. 
It  was  a  horrible  winter,  disease  stalking  every- 
where, especially  among  the  'coloreds.'  Both 
Janvier  and  Richmond  were  overworked.  You 
would  have  thought  that  the  sort  of  office  Janvier 
had,  with  so  many  colored  patients,  would  have 
hurt  his  practice.  Not  a  bit  of  it.  People  felt  a 
trust  in  him.  Children  always  took  to  him,  and 
he  was  very  successful,  as  you  know,  in  children's 
diseases. 

"It  happened  that  in  the  following  spring,  Jan- 
[214] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

vier  was  suddenly  called  to  Toronto  to  see  his 
mother,  who  had  but  a  few  days  to  live.  He  asked 
me  to  look  after  things  a  little,  in  his  absence.  Of 
course,  I  said  I  would,  but  I  told  him,  half-laugh- 
ingly,  that  I  hoped  to  goodness  Charles  Rich- 
mond would  n't  treat  me  to  a  cyclone  of  the  soul; 
and  if  he  did,  I  should  turn  the  hose  on  him.  Jan- 
vier looked  rather  troubled,  but  said  he  did  n't 
expect  anything  of  the  sort.  In  fact,  a  storm  had 
occurred  only  the  day  before,  and  another  such 
tempest  would  n't  be  due  for  a  long  time.  It 
struck  me  that  if  I'd  been  in  Frank's  place,  I 
would  have  been  worried  about  leaving  Anita. 
Very  likely,  Frank  was  worried,  for  he  had  tried  to 
persuade  her  to  visit  her  sister  while  he  was  away. 
But  the  girl  was  tremendously  interested  hi  some 
sick  little  pickaninnies  she  was  helping  both  doc- 
tors to  pull  out  of  various  croups  and  itises,  and 
she  felt  that  those  children  needed  her.  And, 
anyway,  Frank  would  be  back  in  a  few  days." 

A  new  tone  had  crept  into  the  sculptor's  voice, 
and  Gerald  guessed  that  his  uncle  was  about  to 
speak  of  things  hitherto  untold.  "Poor  Steve- 
dear,"  he  thought,  with  a  thrill  of  loving  sympa- 
thy, "he's  come  to  the  place  where  the  novels 
always  have  a  row  of  asterisks,  or  something." 
I  215  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

"And,"  continued  the  other  steadily,  "Frank- 
lin Janvier  did  come  back,  summoned  by  a  tele- 
gram I  sent  him,  telling  him  that  Richmond  had 
committed  suicide.  He  had  shot  himself  at  the 
Tenth  Street  house.  More  than  that,  Anita  had 
seen  it  all,  and  was  prostrated  by  the  shock.  She 
had  often  warned  us  that  Richmond's  end  might 
be  madness.  We  had  laughed  at  her,  and  now  — 
Well,  no  use  dwelling  on  that  part  now,  this  eve- 
ning of  your  happiness,  Gerald !  It 's  enough  to  tell 
you  that  Janvier  went  through  the  hell  of  seeing 
his  young  wife's  mind  give  way  completely,  from 
the  shock.  Specialists  came,  and  after  a  while 
they  held  out  a  distinct  hope  that  a  few  months 
might  bring  a  change  for  the  better.  She  re- 
gained something  of  her  former  sweetness,  but 
it  was  evident  that  most  of  the  time  her  mind  was 
a  blank.  Once,  in  one  of  her  rare  outbursts,  she 
cried  out  that  her  soul  was  snared  in  a  web,  not 
of  her  own  weaving.  You  can  imagine  what 
Janvier  felt,  hearing  this  truth  from  her  lips. 

"  The  young  couple  had  looked  forward  happily 
to  the  birth  of  children;  but  now,  in  extreme  an- 
guish of  spirit,  Frank  Janvier  told  me  that  it  was 
not  worth  the  price;  nothing  could  be  worth  the 
price  his  wife  was  paying.  But  he  did  n't  give  up 
[  216  J 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

hope.  The  doctors  still  believed  that  the  coming 
of  the  child  might  end  forever  the  terrible  shadow. 
Anita  was  naturally  an  unusually  well-balanced 
person.  It  was  part  of  her  charm,  the  kind 
of  sweet  steadiness  she  had.  I  know  Janvier 
counted  on  it  to  save  her,  in  the  end.  So  it  was 
with  very  great  eagerness  that  we  all  awaited  the 
arrival  of  the  Janvier  heir. 

"  By  tacit  agreement,  I  stopped  going  to  the 
Tenth  Street  house,  but  Janvier  came  often  to 
my  studio.  He  seemed  to  cling  to  me  in  his 
trouble,  and  I  wanted  to  help  him,  of  course.  He 
kept  himself  in  hand,  pluckily  enough;  but  some- 
times, in  unguarded  moments,  the  suffering  that 
showed  itself  in  his  face  was  horrible  to  see.  So 
summer  and  autumn  passed,  and  winter  came. 

"  One  bitter  December  night  as  I  was  reading  in 
this  very  room,  a  messenger  brought  me  a  note 
from  Janvier,  begging  me  to  come  to  him  at  once. 
He  had,  as  I  already  knew,  passed  through  two 
days  of  alternate  hope  and  despair.  And  now,  so 
the  note  told  me,  both  wife  and  child  had  died. 
Anita's  face  had  taken  on  a  look  of  exquisite 
beauty,  the  look  of  her  wedding-day.  He  wanted 
me  to  make  the  mask  that  would  preserve  it. 
You  know  how  I  must  have  felt." 
I  2.7] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

"Oh,  Stevedear!" 

"I  felt  I  could  n't  do  it!  But  I  had  a  studio- 
man  who  was  an  expert  in  casting,  and  I  roused 
him  from  his  bed  to  go  with  me  to  Janvier's. 
Poor  Giuseppe  had  been  up  several  nights  with 
his  youngest  child.  It  happened  that  Dr.  Jan- 
vier, who  had  a  helping  hand  for  every  workman 
in  the  quarter,  had  been  taking  care  of  Giuseppe's 
boy,  right  in  the  midst  of  his  own  troubles;  and 
Giuseppe  was  glad  enough  to  do  anything  he  could 
for  il  Signor  Dottore. 

"Well,  I  won't  tell  you  about  that  bedside,  and 
Frank's  silent  anguish;  you  know  well  enough 
about  such  scenes  —  The  room  was  large  and 
lofty,  not  unlike  this.  At  the  far  end  was  an  al- 
cove, curtained  off;  and  behind  the  drapery  I 
could  discern  a  light,  and  a  cradle;  but  we  did  not 
speak  of  those  things.  There  was  no  attendant. 
Anita's  old  nurse,  Loretta,  who  was  a  kind  of 
mother  to  us  all,  was  sleeping  in  the  next  cham- 
ber, worn  out  with  labor  and  sorrow.  And  the 
others,  those  terrible,  necessary  others  that  you 
and  I  can  never  get  used  to,  were  not  to  appear 
until  the  morrow. 

"It  was  like  Janvier  not  to  waken  Loretta.  He 
himself  brought  water  and  towels.  Giuseppe  was 

[  21-8  ] 


Tbe  Face  called  Forgiveness 

just  about  to  mix  his  first  plaster  when  a  knock 
was  heard.  Janvier  stepped  out,  but  soon  re- 
turned to  tell  Giuseppe,  very  gravely,  that  little 
Emilio  was  once  more  in  agony,  and  that  both  of 
them  must  go  at  once,  in  the  hope  of  saving  the 
child's  life.  You  see  Janvier  had  made  some  im- 
portant studies  in  children's  lung  troubles,  and 
had  worked  out  some  successful  methods  that  he 
did  n't  yet  dare  trust  to  others,  without  super- 
vision." 

"You  mean  to  say  he  and  Giuseppe  left  you 
there?" 

"It  was  the  only  thing  to  do,  wasn't  it?  If 
Janvier  could  bear  his  part,  why  shouldn't  I 
bear  mine?  I  knew  it  might  be  hours  before  he 
would  leave  Giuseppe's  child.  And  I  knew,  too, 
that  the  exalted  loveliness  of  that  dead  face 
might  vanish  at  any  moment;  such  looks  do  not 
stay  long  among  us.  Janvier's  quiet  putting  aside 
of  his  own  feelings  showed  me  what  to  do.  I 
steeled  myself  and  made  the  mould.  I  don't 
mind  telling  you,  a  cold  sweat  broke  out  all  over 
me;  but  dreading  it  was  really  much  harder  to 
bear  than  doing  it.  There  was  something  in  the 
still  beauty  of  the  girl's  face  that  strengthened 
me;  I  seemed  to  see  and  feel  this  loveliness  even 
[  219  ] 


The  Face  catted  Forgiveness 

while  I  was  veiling  it  under  layers  of  plaster.  And 
when  I  had  taken  the  mould  away,  and  the  face 
was  revealed  again,  no  less  peaceful  than  before, 
and  quite  unprofaned  by  my  work,  I  felt  a  kind 
of  consolation.  My  part  of  the  work  had  been 
rightly  done,  for  all  my  trembling;  and  Giuseppe 
could  easily  make  the  cast  itself,  in  my  studio. 

"A  long  time,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  I  sat  there 
by  the  bed,  watching  that  beloved  face.  I  won- 
dered whether  the  same  radiant  peace  shone  from 
the  face  of  the  dead  child.  I  knew  Anita  would 
wish  to  have  me  look  at  her  child;  I  owed  it  to  her 
memory. 

"I  parted  the  alcove  curtains,  and  turning  up 
the  light,  I  lifted  the  delicate  little  linen  sheet 
that  covered  the  cradle.  What  I  saw  I  have  never 
yet  spoken  of  to  any  one,  not  even  to  Janvier; 
perhaps  least  of  all  to  Janvier,  Janvier  with  his 
great  dream  of  justice!  I  know  that  what  I  say  is 
safe  with  you,  Gerald?  You  promise?  The  little 
face,  exquisitely  fashioned  and  peaceful,  indeed, 
was  unmistakably  one  of  those  darker  blossoms 
on  the  tree  of  life.  The  darker  strain!  And  it  was 
far  more  clearly  marked  than  in  Richmond." 

Gerald  recoiled  in  horror.  "Richmond  — " 

"Yes!     In    one    hideous,    backward-looking 

[   220   ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

lightning-flash,  I  saw  just  what  had  been  Anita's 
fate.  I  saw  her  long  months  of  mental  eclipse, 
following  the  attack  of  a  madman.  I  had  often 
noted  her  not  unkindly  meant  attitude  of  racial 
superiority  toward  the  frantically  sensitive 
Richmond;  and  I  understood  just  how  a  mere 
glance  or  word  of  hers  had  whipped  to  the  sur- 
face the  one  black  drop  in  his  high-strung,  over- 
wrought frame,  driving  him  to  an  unspeakable 
betrayal.  No  wonder  he  had  killed  himself.  No 
wonder  the  proud,  blameless  girl  had  cried  aloud 
to  her  husband,  out  of  the  abyss  of  darkened 
reason,  that  she  was  caught  and  crushed  in  a  web 
not  of  her  own  weaving!" 

"I  suppose,"  hesitated  Gerald,  "there  was 
never  any  doubt  of  Richmond's  crime?" 

"None  whatever.  There  was  even  a  witness! 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  poor  faithful  Loretta,  who 
worshipped  Anita,  and  followed  her  like  a  shadow, 
had  been  working  in  the  room  next  to  the  office, 
when  she  heard  Richmond  talking  to  Mrs.  Jan- 
vier, in  a  crazy,  shrieking  way,  about  a  prescrip- 
tion. His  tone  was  so  strange  and  threatening 
that  she  was  terrified  for  her  mistress,  and  rushed 
toward  the  office.  The  door  was  slammed  vio- 
lently in  her  face,  and  locked.  She  beat  on 

[221    ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

the  panels,  and  screamed,  but  help  came  too 
late." 

The  level  voice  faltered  a  moment,  then  con- 
tinued: "My  first  impulse  was  to  escape  from  the 
room,  anywhere,  anywhere,  out  of  the  horror  of 
it.  But  Anita's  face  with  its  majestic  calm  held 
me  there;  that,  and  the  example  of  Janvier's  forti- 
tude. And,  well,  life  must  be  lived!  There  might 
be  something  I  could  do  for  Janvier,  or  Giuseppe, 
for  that  matter,  on  their  return.  Once  again  I  went 
to  the  alcove,  this  time  carrying  a  lighted  candle, 
to  be  doubly  sure  of  a  dreadful  thing.  The  tiny 
bronze  face  with  closed  eyes  implored  only  peace 
—  a  shadow  praying  to  return  to  its  rest  among 
shadows. 

"Until  gray  morning,  I  waited  in  that  still 
house  for  Janvier.  I  did  not  know  what  I  should 
do  or  say;  I  only  knew  that  I  knew  what  were 
better  left  unknown,  perhaps.  But  how  small  my 
own  distresses  seemed  when  he  came  in,  and  shed 
the  light  of  his  indomitable  spirit  over  that  place 
of  sorrows!  He  seemed  a  creature  emerging  out 
of  the  wreck  of  all  his  own  hopes,  supported  out 
of  chaos  solely  by  his  will  to  re-create  hope  in 
the  world. 

"'Giuseppe's  boy  will  live,  I  think,'  he  said, 
[  222  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

simply.  'We've  brought  him  through  the  crisis. 
Thank  you,  Steven,  for  giving  me  the  chance  to 
save  him.  I  could  not  have  left  Anita  unless  you 
had  stayed.  Poor  Loretta  was  tired  beyond  en- 
durance, and  I  had  sent  away  the  trained  nurse. 
She  was  worn  out,  too.' 

"I  wrung  his  hand.  'I  loved  Anita,' I  sobbed 
out,  weakly  enough. 

"'I  know,  I  know,'  he  said.  And  then  a  great 
light  came  to  me.  I  saw  that  it  would  n't  be  nec- 
essary for  me,  then  or  at  any  other  time,  to  de- 
bate passionately  with  myself  whether  or  not  I 
should  speak  to  him  of  what  I  had  learned.  The 
largeness  of  his  grief  sheltered  all  my  anxieties. 
His  arm  around  my  shoulder,  we  stood  together 
looking  down  upon  the  face  of  a  much  loved  and 
deeply  wronged  woman.  In  life,  it  had  been  a 
face  to  delight  in;  a  face  with  loyal  blue  eyes  under 
upraised  dark  lashes,  a  delicate  straight  nose,  and 
lips  vividly  curved  like  the  petals  of  a  rose.  In 
death,  with  the  eyes  forever  shadowed,  the  flower- 
like  coloring  effaced,  its  beauty  of  form  was  en- 
hanced. But  more  than  this,  a  spiritual  signifi- 
cance, not  previously  apprehended  by  us,  shone 
through  the  pale  clay.  We  both  of  us  felt  it.  Jan- 
vier did  well  to  have  such  loveliness  preserved. 
[  223  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

"That  was  the  only  mould  I  have  ever  made 
from  a  human  face.  Giuseppe  made  two  casts, 
one  for  Janvier,  one  for  me.  Janvier's  was  de- 
stroyed in  that  fire  you  've  heard  about." 

"And  is  your  copy  still  in  existence?"  Half 
involuntarily,  Gerald  took  up  the  cast  called 
Forgiveness. 

"Yes,"  replied  the  elder  man,  "it  is  in  your 
hands  now." 

The  other  laid  his  lips  reverently  on  the  smooth 
brow  of  the  face  which  had  reminded  the  German 
of  the  Nuremberg  Virgin;  the  face  which  the 
Frenchman  had  thought  French,  the  Italian  girl 
Italian,  and  the  American  boy  American. 

"That  cast,  which  you  say  is  now  called  For- 
giveness, has  been  enshrined  in  this  room,  behind 
the  corner  tapestry  there,  for  more  than  a  genera- 
tion. It  is  older  than  you  are.  After  Janvier  died, 
I  told  myself  it  was  not  right  to  hide  so  much 
beauty  from  the  world.  But  it  was  n't  until  after 
the  Armistice  that  I  mustered  up  courage  to  have 
three  plaster  copies  made.  And  it  was  only  last 
week  that  I  sent  a  copy  to  each  of  our  three 
largest  art  schools." 

"And  you  gave  the  casts  the  name,  Forgive- 
ness? " 

I  224  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

"Ah,  no,  I  left  them  nameless!  But  I  must  tell 
you  a  strange  thing  about  that,  too.  At  the  time 
when  I  made  the  mould,  we  young  artists  were 
very  much  under  the  spell  of  Omar  Khayyam's 
fuzzy,  fezzy  philosophy;  yes,  quite  entangled  in 
the  obscurantist  beauty  of  the  Vine!  Fitzgerald's 
verses  and  our  own  Vedder's  drawings  were  a 
cult  with  us.  I  could  n't  forgive  as  greatly  as 
Janvier  did.  My  wrong  was  less,  and  my  pardon- 
ing power  was  less.  And  whenever  I  thought  of 
the  whole  dreadful  business,  one  of  the  Fitzger- 
ald quatrains  would  ring  in  my  ears;  the  one 
that  ends 

"'For  all  the  sin  with  which  the  face  of  man 

Is  blackened,  Man's  forgiveness  give  —  and  take!' 

"We  thought  it  a  sublime  blasphemy  in  those 
days,  but  in  these  modern,  higher-keyed  times, 
no  doubt  it  sounds  tame  enough.  Anyway,  it 
haunted  me  horribly;  and  to  get  rid  of  it,  I  carved 
it  one  rainy  afternoon,  in  fine  close  letters  like 
slanting  rain,  all  around  the  outer  edge  of  my 
cast.  But  times  change,  and  we  change.  Thirty- 
five  years  later,  when  I  looked  the  cast  over,  be- 
fore giving  it  to  the  moulder  to  make  the  copies 
from,  I  knew  that  those  lines  no  longer  expressed 
what  was  in  my  heart.  I  had  outgrown  them.  I 
[  225  ] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

knew  that  a  better  inscription  would  be,  'For- 
give us  our  trespasses,  as  we  forgive  those  that 
trespass  against  us.'  But  I  decided  to  have  no 
inscription  whatever,  and  to  let  the  cast  carry  its 
own  message  of  beauty.  So,  with  a  file,  and  very 
carefully,  as  I  thought,  I  erased  every  word  of 
that  inscription  like  the  slanting  rain.  Again  and 
again  I  passed  my  fingers  over  it,  until  I  was  sure 
it  was  gone.  Still,  I  suppose  I  must  have  left 
some  breath  of  that  word,  Forgiveness,  which  the 
students  at  the  Museum  discovered.  Though  for 
the  life  of  me,  I  can't  find  a  trace  of  it!" 

He  took  up  a  magnifying-glass,  and  passed  it 
to  Gerald,  who  peered  through  it  intently,  all 
along  the  rim  of  the  cast. 

"No  word  here,"  said  Gerald.  He  passed  his 
fingers  around  the  circling  edge,  as  if,  after  all,  a 
sculptor's  fingers  were  more  to  be  trusted  than  a 
glass.  "No,  there's  nothing,  really!  The  face 
must  have  told  its  own  name.  But  tell  me,  Steve- 
dear,  if  you  don't  mind,  —  did  you  yourself 
really  forgive,  in  the  end?" 

Steven  Grant  smiled,  and  replaced  the  cast 
above  his  hearth-fire.  Before  answering,  he  rum- 
pled Gerald's  hair,  exposing  the  too  high  fore- 
head. 

I  226] 


The  Face  called  Forgiveness 

"Your  question,  my  boy,  makes  me  think  of 
Mrs.  Storms.  Because,  like  that  lady,  it  is  not 
exactly  a  wrong  'un,  but  still,  it  comes  very  near 
the  danger  line." 

And  Gerald  knew  it  was  time  to  turn  from  the 
past  to  the  present,  and  to  talk  of  the  dinner, 
that  masterpiece.  Besides,  as  Steven  Grant  had 
guessed,  the  younger  sculptor  was  longing  to 
speak  of  his  own  Anita,  that  most  beautiful  lady 
whose  shining  tram  he  had  hovered  over,  at  the 
door  of  the  glass  coach.  The  elder  man  rejoiced 
with  all  his  heart  that  there  was  no  Emancipa- 
tion group  to  thwart  his  nephew's  happiness.  In 
honor  of  Gerald's  Anita,  he  was  loyally  ready 
to  shout  with  the  best,  "Long  live  the  Queen!" 
But  he  did  not  say  to  himself,  sorrowfully,  of  the 
earlier  Anita,  "The  Queen  is  dead."  He  saw  in 
his  mind  the  face  called  Forgiveness.  He  listened 
to  the  German  cabinet-maker,  the  French  painter, 
the  Italian  girl,  the  American  student.  There 
were  others,  too,  coming  and  going  in  the  Mu- 
seum; and  what  they  said  of  the  face  made  him 
think  of  life,  not  death. 


THE  ARTIST'S  BIRTHDAY 

ONE  winter  evening,  in  a  snugly  built  little 
stone  cottage  near  the  northern  border  of 
Vermont,  a  young  family  of  three  had  gathered 
beside  a  glowing  hearth  and  a  cheerful  lamp  to 
enjoy  an  hour  of  that  contentment  which  is  most 
deeply  felt  when  the  fire  is  bright,  the  curtain 
closely  drawn,  and  a  storm  is  raging  without.  It 
was  the  birthday  of  the  child  Samuel.  He  was 
three  years  old,  and  as  a  birthday  indulgence,  he 
was  to  sit  up  until  seven  o'clock,  and  carve  things 
with  the  jack-knife  that  his  father,  himself  a 
carver  of  renown,  had  brought  him  as  a  birthday 
gift.  This  was  by  no  means  his  first  adventure 
with  a  knife.  For  a  year  or  more  he  had  managed 
a  knife,  at  first  feebly,  but  later  with  an  astonish- 
ing ease.  His  father  was  proud  of  the  infant  Phid- 
ias, and  even  his  mother  had  ceased  to  be  terror- 
stricken  at  the  conjunction  of  child  and  knife. 
The  motions  of  the  boy  Samuel  were  happy  and 
accurate.  At  the  present  hour,  such  gestures  as 
his  would  be  called  eurhythmic,  or  something  of 
that  sort;  even  in  those  days  of  preposterous 
precocity,  he  was  regarded  with  wonder. 
[  228] 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

It  was  the  month  and  the  year  when  for  the  first 
time  there  was  a  Confederacy,  with  a  President 
to  be  prayed  for,  or  else  against.  Stirring  era! 
No  lack  of  interesting  items  for  the  father  to  read 
aloud  from  his  Weekly;  Nancy,  the  young  wife 
busy  with  her  sewing,  was  as  deeply  interested 
as  he  himself  in  the  doings  at  Fort  Sumter.  Her 
comments  on  Lincoln  and  Davis  were  no  less  keen 
than  his.  With  eyes  now  bent  on  her  work,  a  fine 
linen  handkerchief  to  be  hemmed  on  four  sides, 
and  now  returning  to  the  child  seated  on  the 
braided  rug  at  her  feet,  she  still  had  time  and 
thought  to  give  to  her  husband's  reading;  at 
twenty-three,  she  rejoiced  to  be  living  in  porten- 
tous times.  And  pray  do  not  imagine  that  because 
the  home  was  remote  from  great  cities,  the  mother 
necessarily  comported  herself  as  a  poor  rustic 
creature,  or  as  one  unfamiliar  with  the  counsels 
of  "  Godey's  Lady's  Book."  Her  ample  gown  was 
of  the  finest  cashmere,  triple-dyed  of  a  deep  rose- 
color,  and  it  was  well  spread  out  upon  a  hoop- 
skirt  which  she  managed  with  the  kind  of  skill 
that  a  rose  in  full  bloom  must  employ  when  keep- 
ing its  petals  in  order. 

The  guests  at  the  birthday  feast  had  been  a 
pair  of  grandparents,  a  young  uncle  and  aunt,  and 
[  229  ] 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

a  ten-year-old  girl  from  the  farmhouse  down  the 
road.  The  little  girl,  brave  in  her  well-flounced, 
orange-spotted  purple  delaine,  wore  pantalets 
that  had  been  made  much  too  long  for  her,  in  an- 
ticipation of  some  prodigious  growth  which  had 
not  taken  place;  and  these  had  been  starched  too 
stiffly,  so  that  she  creaked  audibly  during  loco- 
motion. But  she  was  very  happy  at  the  party; 
and  though  her  costume  might  appear  but  ill- 
suited  to  the  rigors  of  a  Vermont  winter,  it  must 
be  remembered  that  in  those  days  female  attire 
had  no  commerce  with  common  sense.  Promptly 
at  half-past  five  her  mother  came  for  her,  bustling 
competently  into  the  house,  with  an  accompani- 
ment of  impatient  sleigh-bells  outside;  and  she 
glanced  with  undisguised  curiosity  at  the  spread 
table,  not  yet  cleared  away,  the  birthday  cake 
with  its  heathenish  three  candles,  and  the  young 
heir  himself. 

"They  say  he  hain't  never  been  punished 
none?" 

Nancy  flushed,  and  held  back  an  angry  answer. 
She  was  aware  that  the  subject  had  already  been 
torn  to  tatters  by  the  village  gossips.  "Punished? 
No,  not  yet." 

"I  want  to  know!  Wai,  I  guess  he's  needed 
[  230  ] 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

it,  afore  now!"  The  farm- wife  was  emphatic; 
but  there  was  motherly  love  as  well  as  village  cu- 
riosity in  her  scrutiny  of  little  Samuel.  "Looks 
jest  like  a  young  American  flag,  don't  he?  Them 
blue  pants,  and  red  cheeks,  and  eyes  stickin'  out 
so  kinda  starry.  But  all  childern  needs  punish- 
ments," she  chirped.  "They're  all  of 'em  limbs 
of  Satan.  I've  had  seven,  and  I  guess  I  know." 
She  cast  an  eagle  eye  on  the  pantalets  of  her  first 
"limb."  "Them  Hamburg  points  allus  ketch  up 
every  mite  of  dust,"  she  lamented,  as  she  tucked 
her  child  under  a  buffalo  robe  and  drove  away 
through  the  snow. 

"  Wai,  she  knows  a  lot,  if  she  knows  all  she 
thinks  she  doos,"  was  the  grandmother's  placid 
comment,  as  she  and  the  aunt  cleared  away  the 
feast.  "Nancy  has  no  call  to  mind  her."  It  was 
evident  that  Nancy  was  a  creature  lovingly  set 
apart  in  that  little  world.  Having  borne  the  brunt 
of  the  birthday  preparations,  she  was  not  allowed 
to  put  on  her  all-enveloping  kitchen  apron  again, 
but  was  forced  down  into  her  own  chair  in  the 
bright  sitting-room.  Rather  early,  because  of  the 
bitter  weather,  the  guests  had  gone,  and  the  fam- 
ily was  left  to  itself  in  a  loving  intimacy  precious 
to  each  of  the  three. 

[231  ] 


Tie  Artist's  Birthday 

The  young  mother's  face,  softly  banded  with 
dark  hair,  rose  flower-like  above  a  lace  collar, 
fastened  at  the  throat  by  a  large  elliptical  shell 
cameo  representing  Ganymede  teasing  the  eagles 
of  Jupiter.  To  the  wearer  that  brooch  was  a  pleas- 
ing and  a  precious  thing.  It  had  been  her  moth- 
er's, and  had  been  bought  in  Rome  by  her  father, 
our  first  American  translator  of  Tasso.  Whether 
or  not  as  an  aid  to  his  own  understanding  of  the 
Italian  poet,  the  New  England  scholar  had  mar- 
ried a  gentle  Sicilian  girl,  and  Nancy  herself  had 
been  born  in  Rome  and  christened  Annunziata, 
an  outlandish  name  that  American  relatives,  after 
the  scholar's  return,  had  promptly  transformed 
into  Nancy.  And  all  her  life  Nancy  had  been 
conscious,  not  without  joy,  of  her  twofold  nature 
as  a  New  Englander  and  an  Italian.  Nancy  and 
Annunziata  were  both  of  them  under  her  skin. 
She  never  knew  which  one  triumphed  the  oftener. 
In  the  kitchen,  Nancy,  perhaps;  in  the  sitting- 
room,  Annunziata. 

That  evening,  as  she  sewed  her  fine  seam,  the 
ample  roseate  sleeves  of  her  gown  and  the  white 
undersleeves  flowing  beneath  them  moved  in  and 
out  of  the  lamplight  in  a  kind  of  stately  melody 
as  for  a  minuet.  Watching  the  child  at  his  carv- 
[  232  ] 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

ing,  she  hoped  and  dreamed  for  him  the  life  beau- 
tiful, the  life  of  a  sculptor.  Had  Raphael  been 
there,  she  would  have  been  a  Madonna;  a  Ma- 
donna of  the  hoopskirt,  but  not  of  the  rocking- 
chair.  No,  indeed!  The  chair  she  sat  in  was  one 
that  her  husband  had  made  and  carved  for  her, 
after  a  drawing  in  an  ancient  book  on  Italian 
furniture;  its  beauty  and  strength  were  a  constant 
delight  to  her.  And  even  without  the  chair,  and 
the  Ganymede,  and  the  crimson  curtains,  it  would 
have  been  evident  that  this  young  pair  were 
among  the  aristocrats  of  the  village;  they  felt  that 
they  belonged  to  the  only  aristocracy  the  place 
permitted,  the  aristocracy  of  mind.  They  had 
more  books  than  the  minister  even.  And  no  doubt 
Nancy's  birth  in  Rome,  that  far-off  city  where  the 
Pope  lives,  had  added  a  secretly  savored  pagan 
touch  to  the  picture  the  hamlet  had  made  of  her. 
Still  more  than  the  woman  with  her  Madonna 
vision,  the  man  exulted  in  the  child's  rapt  in- 
dustry. With  vigilant  eye  he  noted  the  process  of 
creation.  A  cat,  it  seemed;  Samuel  was  carving  a 
cat;  no,  the  cat!  Once  in  a  while,  as  if  to  refresh  a 
memory  perhaps  somewhat  dimmed  by  his  three 
years'  stay  among  mortals,  Samuel  would  glance 
toward  Pharaoh,  the  great  green-eyed  old  black 
[233  ] 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

torn;  but  mostly  his  head  with  its  long  fair  curls 
was  bent  over  his  work.  Samuel  was  not  copying  a 
cat;  he  was  rather  evolving  the  cat  from  the  deeps 
of  his  inner  consciousness.  Samuel's  cat  was  not 
the  lithe  and  lordly  beast  of  Barye,  nor  yet  the 
affable  companion  that  Fremiet  has  given  to  the 
world;  it  was  rather  a  cat  of  the  Egyptians,  the 
mystery  of  cathood  incarnate.  And  just  as  Mi- 
chelangelo knew  that  an  angel  slept  in  his  marble 
block,  so  Samuel  knew  that  all  cathood  crouched 
within  a  wooden  chip.  The  father,  seeing  the 
child's  difficulty  in  separating  the  cat-mass  from 
the  scrap  of  board  in  his  tiny  hand,  would  gladly 
have  performed  the  rude  preliminaries.  But  the 
boy  had  drawn  back,  and  clasping  the  wood  to  his 
chest,  had  said  firmly,  in  his  usual  way  of  speak- 
ing only  the  key- words  of  a  situation,  "Self  do 
all!"  Samuel  knew  no  baby-talk.  From  his 
mother  and  her  New  England  forbears  (scholars, 
theologians,  translators,  and  the  like)  he  had  in- 
herited a  great  fund  of  words  fit  to  be  spoken, 
and  from  his  father  a  passion  for  perfection  in  all 
things.  He  had  a  natural  longing  to  say  things 
rightly,  and  so  saved  his  larynx  for  the  essential 
syllables.  The  father,  well-pleased  with  that  con- 
fident "Self  do  all,"  returned  to  his  reading.  But 
[234  1 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

Samuel,  rather  than  Fort  Sumter,  filled  his  mind 
that  night. 

An  odd-looking  creature,  one  would  say,  if 
Samuel  should  suddenly  appear  in  our  modern 
circle.  Yet  his  oddity  was  rather  in  what  had 
been  done  to  him  than  in  what  he  was.  His  yellow 
hair  was  arranged  in  seven  tight  spirals  hanging 
to  his  shoulders;  an  eighth  spiral  made  a  sort  of 
shining  ridgepole  on  the  roof  of  his  head,  from 
the  -brow  backwards.  Beyond  question,  a  pretty 
child,  with  the  delicately  brilliant  coloring  of  the 
Nordic;  and  his  fine  strong  hands  and  feet  had  a 
definite  character  of  their  own.  He  wore  a  low- 
necked,  short-sleeved  tunic,  very  voluminous  as 
to  its  skirt;  it  was  made  of  thick  blue  woollen 
material  woven  by  his  grandmother.  Beneath 
the  tunic  were  ridiculous  shapeless  breeches  of 
the  same  stuff;  then  came  a  section  of  bare  calf, 
and  after  that,  white  wool  socks  and  stout,  cop- 
per-toed ankle-ties.  As  he  sat  on  the  braided  rug, 
among  his  blue  homespun  billows,  his  back  against 
his  adoring  slave,  the  sheep-dog  Ajax,  and  his 
heart  and  soul  bound  up  in  his  job  of  carving,  he 
was  at  once  the  most  absurd  and  lovable  object 
in  all  Vermont.  Disquieting,  too,  perhaps,  for  his 
next  of  kin. 

[235  1 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

Seven  o'clock  was  to  be  his  bed-knell;  and  now 
seven  o'clock  suddenly  sounded  from  the  tall 
shape  in  the  corner.  At  once  the  mother  rose, 
smoothed  her  ample  skirt,  and  held  out  her  hand. 
"Bedtime,  Samuel." 

Samuel  looked  at  her  beseechingly,  but  he  knew 
that  his  look  was  lost.  Already  in  his  short  life  he 
had  learned  that  in  the  realm  of  prohibitions, 
woman  is  of  sterner  stuff  than  man.  He  therefore 
gazed  toward  the  spot  where  help  was  more  likely 
to  be  found.  Still  seated  firmly,  clutching  his  cat 
in  one  hand  and  his  new  knife  in  the  other,  he 
stretched  out  his  arms  to  his  father,  and  cried 
aloud,  "None  done,  papa!"  Invincible  argument 
from  creator  to  creator,  "None  done!" 

The  parents  exchanged  irresolute  glances. 
"Very  well,  Samuel,  just  ten  minutes  more." 
Samuel,  victorious,  returned  to  his  art.  But  what 
are  minutes  to  him  whom  the  dream  has  pos- 
sessed? At  the  end  of  ten  minutes,  when  the 
mother  rose  again,  and  delicately  flicked  her  cash- 
mere folds,  Samuel  was  far  more  unready  than 
before.  And  now,  his  clear  infantine  voice  with 
its  uncannily  correct  enunciation  had  lost  its 
former  coaxing  grace.  The  tone  was  haughty, 
argumentative.  "None  done,  papa!" 
[236] 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

"It's  his  birthday,  caro  mio"  The  young 
mother  spoke  softly,  hesitating;  the  father,  in 
secret  delight,  relinquished  responsibility.  "May 
as  well  make  it  half-past  seven,"  he  growled. 
"  Perhaps  he  '11  be  tired  out  by  then."  But  when  he 
said  that, he  must  must  have  forgotten  his  own  ela- 
tion in  carving  his  violins  of  an  evening.  By  day 
he  worked  on  patterns  for  huge  machinery,  shap- 
ing them  with  deft  mechanical  skill.  But  every 
night,  between  nine  and  eleven,  when  the  evening 
reading  was  over  and  the  little  house  under  the 
pines  was  very  still,  he  used  to  bring  out  one  of 
his  violins,  and  carve  and  caress  and  polish  its 
exquisite  surfaces.  The  patterns  for  machines 
were  his  livelihood,  but  the  violins  were  his  love. 
How  could  he  have  forgotten  his  own  raptures  of 
carving!  Ah,  no,  Samuel  was  by  no  means  "  tired 
out  by  then!" 

When  the  half-hour  sounded,  the  husband 
stood  up,  beckoning  to  the  wife  to  remain  seated. 
No  more  woman's  foolishness;  the  boy  must  to 
bed.  "Come  on,  young  man!  Time's  up!"  Yet 
his  voice  did  not  sound  so  commanding  as  he  had 
hoped.  Samuel  felt  its  indecision;  and  indeed  he 
was  at  the  moment  too  high  in  the  clouds  of  carv- 
ing to  give  any  attention  whatsoever  to  things 
[237] 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

beneath.  "None  done,  papa!"  The  voice  was  no 
longer  coaxing;  it  was  not  even  argumentative; 
it  was  hostile,  truculent  to  a  degree.  And  when 
his  father  approached  him,  to  make  an  end,  the 
boy  looked  wildly  around  as  if  praying  to  the 
gods  to  take  his  work  of  art  under  their  protec- 
tion. But  no  gods  intervened,  and  Samuel,  at 
bay  before  his  universe,  seized  his  carving  in  all 
its  cathood,  hid  it  among  his  back  breadths,  and 
sat  down  strongly  upon  it,  glaring  defiance  at  his 
progenitors.  "None  done!" 

The  mother  rose  quickly,  Nancy  trampling  on 
Annunziata.  Her  face  was  pale.  "This  is  dis- 
obedience," she  said  in  a  shaken  voice,  "and  it 
must  have  its  punishment.  It  is  the  third  time, 
within  three  months,  that  he  has  needed  punish- 
ment. The  first  time  was  the  eggs.  The  second 
time  it  was  the  spectacles.  And  now,  it  is  —  in- 
subordination." Her  heart  contracted  with  suf- 
fering. Insubordination!  A  large  word  to  use  on 
so  small  a  being ! 

Ah,  yes,  the  eggs,  and  the  spectacles!  The 
young  father  remembered  the  eggs  and  the  spec- 
tacles; and  even  in  the  midst  of  a  misery  scarcely 
less  acute  than  the  mother's,  a  smile  twitched  his 
lips.  Theeggsl  . 

[  238] 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

In  brief,  little  Samuel,  at  the  age  of  quarter 
before  three,  had  noted  with  a  curious  eye  that 
Matilda,  the  brown  hen,  had  one  egg  that  dif- 
fered from  others.  It  was  hard,  white,  shiny;  it 
had  nothing  of  the  soft,  pale-brown,  pleasant 
egg-color  the  other  eggs  had.  One  day  he  took  it 
out  of  the  nest  to  consider  it.  He  put  it  on  the 
barn  floor.  There  was  a  hammer  near  at  hand. 
Samuel  liked  hammers.  With  the  hammer,  he 
struck  the  china  egg  once,  twice,  thrice.  Nothing 
happened.  Curious!  He  then  put  one  of  the 
pleasant  egg-colored  eggs  on  the  floor.  He  struck 
it  but  once,  and  his  whole  world  dissolved  into  a 
filthy  chaos  not  to  be  borne.  Overwhelmed  with 
remorse  and  bad-egg  juice,  he  fled  in  terror  to  his 
mother.  He  wept  so  long  and  earnestly  that  she 
considered  him  punished  enough. 

As  for  the  spectacles,  there  was  an  evil  deed  for 
you !  His  grandmother  had  set  her  spectacles  on 
the  tall  mantel-shelf,  just  under  the  picture  of 
sorrowful  flowers  made  from  the  hair  of  young 
and  old.  Most  of  the  flowers  were  black,  or  white, 
or  brownish  drab.  Samuel  did  not  like  the  pic- 
ture, but  the  spectacles  had  always  interested 
him.  He  dragged  a  chair  to  the  mantel,  and  by 
heroic  dimbing,  reached  them.  He  seldom  broke 
I  239  1 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

things,  his  motions  being  accurate,  and  he  came 
down  to  earth  with  the  spectacles  unharmed. 
What  to  do  with  them?  And  there  was  grand- 
mother's lace  cap,  too.  How  about  Ajax,  the 
sheep-dog?  Not  without  difficulty,  but  without 
mishap,  Samuel  was  forcing  the  glasses  upon 
Ajax,  when  help  came  to  the  good  dog,  and  in  the 
person  of  the  master  of  the  house.  At  the  sight  of 
the  woe-begone  spectacled  animal,  and  the  lace 
cap,  no  longer  what  it  once  was,  Samuel's  father 
had  laughed  so  loud  and  long  that  both  parents 
agreed  that  punishment  would  be  inconsistency 
itself. 

But  now,  with  little  Samuel  sitting  defiant  on 
his  work  of  art,  a  picture  of  insubordination, 
punishment  could  no  longer  be  delayed.  The 
mother  put  her  arms  around  her  husband's  neck. 
"Oh,  remember  how  tiny  he  is,  Abel,"  she  wailed. 
"I  shall  stay  in  the  kitchen  till  it's  done."  She 
ran  into  the  cold,  dark  kitchen,  where  she  knelt  in 
anguish,  an  ear  against  the  keyhole. 

The  father,  alone  with  his  offspring,  was  agi- 
tated too.  His  hands  were  so  strong!  Surely,  in 
a  better  world  than  this,  a  better  way  could  be 
found.  How  was  he  to  know  how  much  he  ought 
to  hurt  his  own  child?  He  groaned  as  he  picked 
[  240  ] 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

up  the  boy,  slipped  down  those  absurd  and  shape- 
less breeches,  and  with  firm  hand  directed  toward 
the  infirm,  time-honored  spot,  administered 
chastisement.  A  shriek  of  surprise  and  anger,  a 
burst  of  sobs,  then  silence.  The  woman  at  the 
keyhole  could  bear  the  shriek  and  the  sobs,  but 
not  the  silence.  She  bounded  into  the  room,  and 
clasped  the  insubordinate  one  to  her  heart.  In 
truth,  even  the  dog  Ajax  was  disturbed  by  that 
homely  scene  of  punishment;  the  hair  on  his 
shoulders  stiffened,  and  he  made  an  evil  noise  in 
the  back  of  his  throat.  Of  all  those  present,  the 
cat  Pharaoh  alone  remained  unmoved,  detached 
as  the  Pyramids  themselves,  in  a  stony  indiffer- 
ence to  human  woe.  Pharaoh,  though  in  a  sense 
connected  with  the  origin  of  the  trouble,  washed 
his  paws  of  it,  and  kept  his  calm. 

Silent  tears  ran  down  Samuel's  cheeks,  from 
which,  as  the  mother  saw  with  terror,  the  dazzling 
rosy  color  had  now  quite  faded.  The  Nancy  in 
her  died;  only  the  Annunziata  was  left.  Oh,  what 
if,  what  if?  —  But  her  alarm  was  needless.  Sam- 
uel had  the  proud  blood  of  survivors  in  his  veins. 
Not  for  nothing  was  he  a  Vermonter  born.  Welsh 
seers  and  Norman  craftsmen  and  Scottish  cove- 
nanters had  stubbornly  watched  his  cradle;  his  fair 
(241  ] 


Tie  Artist's  Birthday 

substance  had  come  all  the  way  to  Vermont  from 
old  Rome  via  Bunker  Hill.  The  father  brought 
from  the  adjoining  bedroom  the  child's  woolly 
nightgown,  ugly  and  comfortable  and  orange- 
dyed.  He  warmed  it  before  the  blaze.  As  the 
parents  undressed  the  culprit,  they  noted,  with 
an  almost  guilty  surprise,  how  much  smaller  he 
seemed  now  that  his  blue  tunic  was  off.  The  fa- 
ther held  the  boy  in  his  arms  before  the  fire,  while 
the  mother,  kneeling,  wiped  away  the  soundless 
tears  welling  continually.  No  word  was  spoken. 
At  last  the  father  carried  the  dusky  orange  cocoon 
into  the  bedroom,  and  set  it  in  its  crib,  and  cov- 
ered it  gently.  The  mother,  worn  out  by  the 
artist's  birthday,  crept  away  to  bed,  leaving  her 
husband  to  console  himself  with  his  violins,  if  he 
could. 

That  hour  with  the  violins  was  always  very 
dear  to  Abel.  As  he  busied  his  hands  with  their 
beautiful  bodies,  his  soul  lost  itself  in  happy  rever- 
ies in  which  Samuel  played  no  small  part.  Annun- 
ziata  also  shone,  in  rich,  incredible  rainbow  rob- 
ings  from  foreign  looms,  and  with  the  wealth  of 
foreign  continents  on  her  neck  and  fingers;  from 
the  first  moment  when  he  saw  her,  he  had  been 
mad  about  her  touch  of  foreignness;  he  had  seen 
I  242  ] 


Tbe  Artist's  Birthday 

it  as  a  sure  amulet  against  the  encroaching  hated 
drabness  of  New  England  milltown  life.  It  was 
Annunziata  who  had  set  his  spirit  free.  He  always 
called  her  Annunziata  in  those  golden  visions; 
never  Nancy.  And  sometimes  he  thought  it  odd, 
indeed,  that  in  his  violin  hours,  when  wife  and 
child  were  away,  safe  in  a  dreamland  of  their  own, 
he  felt  and  cherished  their  existences  even  more 
deeply  than  when  they  were  at  his  side. 

But  to-night  he  had  no  joy  in  craftsmanship; 
he  stared  helplessly  at  the  scrolled  neck-piece  in 
his  hand.  "The  little  shaver!"  he  muttered. 
"He  took  it  like  a  soldier.  The  little  shaver! 
Damned  if  I'll  do  it  again,  in  a  hurry."  Then  he 
smiled  that  sudden  whimsical  smile  of  his.  "  But 
perhaps  he  '11  be  damned  if  I  don't!  Queer  world." 
He  was  startled  to  find  that  for  the  first  time  in 
his  life,  his  violins  had  no  interest  for  him;  he  put 
away  his  veneers  and  glue-pot.  He  could  not  wait 
any  longer;  he  must  see  for  himself  whether  those 
silent  tears  had  ceased. 

Samuel  in  his  crib  lay  very  quiet,  eyes  wide 
open,  tears  still  coursing  into  the  collar  of  his 
orange  nightgown.  The  perplexed  father  decided 
to  meet  the  situation  with  jocularity.  "  Say,  lad- 
die, aren't  you  going  to  shut  those  peepers?" 
[243  ] 


Tie  Artist's  Birthday 

And  the  child,  as  before,  answered  with  what  was 
uppermost  in  his  mind,  "None  done,  papa!" 

A  long  time  the  parents  lay  in  their  great  square 
bed,  saying  nothing,  but  each  guessing  at  the 
other's  thought.  Annunziata  was  trying  to  be 
Nancy,  as  Vermont  expected,  and  Abel  was  seek- 
ing to  be  Providence  for  his  all.  At  last  he 
stretched  out  a  cautious  hand  toward  the  crib,  to 
find  that  the  child  also  was  awake.  Without  more 
ado,  he  lifted  Samuel  into  the  big  bed,  and  there 
the  parents  cherished  the  child  between  them, 
until  the  small  body  relaxed  in  the  pleasant 
warmth.  Next  morning,  when  the  carver  went  to 
his  work,  Samuel  was  still  sleeping,  as  rosy  and 
peaceful  as  if  he  had  never  known  either  insub- 
ordination or  punishment. 

The  new  day  was  a  marvel  of  sunshine.  During 
the  night,  the  snow  had  changed  to  rain;  this  in 
turn  had  given  way  to  colder  weather,  and  now 
myriads  of  jewels  hung  from  enchanted  apple 
trees.  A  white  fairyland!  The  child  clapped  his 
hands  with  delight  as  his  mother  wrapped  him 
warm  in  his  various  rabbit-skin  garments,  and 
gathered  his  curls  up  under  a  raccoon  cap,  and  led 
him  down  the  garden  path  to  frolic  with  old  Ajax 
in  the  clean  snow.  When  she  brought  him  in,  he 
(  244  1 


Tie  Artist's  Birthday 

was  glowing  and  sparkling  with  unearthly  glee. 
She  thought  she  had  never  dreamed  of  anything 
so  beautiful.  She  wondered  whether  Joseph  and 
Mary  in  the  carpenter's  shop  had  ever  punished 
Jesus  for  playing  too  long  among  the  shavings, 
and  what  the  Child  had  said.  Probably  some- 
thing much  more  moving  than  "None  done, 
papa."  But  if  so,  she  wondered  how  Mary  could 
bear  it. 

Samuel's  elfin  merriment  quieted  down  in  the 
warm  room.  No  longer  insubordinate,  he  allowed 
his  mother  to  take  him  up  on  her  lap,  and  to  brush 
the  tangled  curls  over  a  round  stick,  until  they 
became  orderly  spirals  once  more.  He  had  not 
yet  learned  that  curls  were  effeminate;  that  battle 
was  to  be  much  later.  He  made  no  move  to  take 
up  his  carving,  or  to  defend  his  past,  reserving 
such  discussions  as  these  for  a  meeting  with  the 
masculine  mind.  All  the  afternoon  he  seemed  a 
creature  both  isolate  and  expectant,  darting  to 
the  -window  whenever  a  vagrom  sleigh-bell  tin- 
kled in  fairyland.  Isolate  and  expectant!  His 
mother  wondered  whether  all  artists  were  doomed 
to  be  so.  Once  she  caught  him  up  in  her  arms,  and 
cried  out  to  him  in  her  childhood's  tongue,  *'O 
caro,  caro,  perchl  ? "  And  Samuel  passed  his  fin- 
[245  1 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

gers  over  her  forehead,  and  then  over  the  Gany- 
mede brooch,  saying  three  words  that  his  father 
had  taught  him  in  jest,  but  which  he  had  learned 
in  earnest,  "Beau,  bello,  beau-ti-ful!"  He  loved 
those  three  words,  and  very  often,  apropos  of 
nothing,  he  spoke  them  in  his  incredibly  distinct 
way.  But  to-day  his  mother  felt  his  aloofness; 
she  knew  that  he  was  waiting  for  something, 
something  not  in  her  power  to  give. 

The  young  carver  was  a  privileged  person  in 
the  shop  where  he  worked.  That  day  he  could  not 
fix  his  mind  on  those  wooden  models  of  wheel  and 
shaft.  He  was  unsatisfied  about  his  child,  and  in 
the  middle  of  the  afternoon  abruptly  put  away 
his  tools  and  went  home.  Early  as  it  was,  Samuel 
was  already  waiting.  The  child  had  been  listening 
for  that  step  in  the  passage.  There  was  some- 
thing to  be  explained;  the  indignity  of  yesterday's 
happening  had  not  yet  passed  into  forge tfulness. 
He  took  his  unfinished  cat  in  hand,  and  hitched 
his  trousers  higher.  If  last  night's  encounter  was 
to  be  repeated,  he  would  not  easily  be  separated 
from  his  defensive  armor! 

The  father,  coming  in  glowingly  from  the  fresh- 
ness of  the  winter  day,  was  dazed  by  that  militant 
figure  and  its  immediate  challenge,  "None  done, 
[246] 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

papa ! "  He  hardly  knew  how  to  answer  whatever 
demand  was  thereby  made  upon  him.  No  parent 
relishes  the  role  of  Goliath!  But  love  aided  him. 
He  warmed  his  hands  at  the  blaze,  and  seizing  the 
belligerent,  tossed  him  high  in  the  air  many  times, 
knowing  that  Samuel  had  never  yet  had  enough 
of  that  sport.  Then  he  sat  down  before  the  fire, 
the  boy  in  his  arms,  and  poured  out  a  thousand 
foolish  tendernesses  over  the  seven  spirals,  and 
the  shining  ridgepole.  The  sensitive  child  caught 
the  shadow  of  anxiety,  even  as  it  was  vanishing 
from  his  father's  face.  What  sorrow  was  this? 
His  own  sorrows  had  been  two:  a  work  of  art  un- 
done, a  first  whipping.  His  father  was  the  one 
who  gave,  not  took  whippings;  his  father's  sorrow 
was  therefore  about  the  work  of  art.  Ah,  that  was 
something  he  himself  could  well  understand,  and 
perhaps  console;  though  the  cat  was  unfinished, 
there  was  many  another  work  not  yet  begun.  He 
laid  a  valiant  hand  on  his  blue  woollen  chest,  and 
declared,  "Self  make  more!"  Perhaps  he  saw  a 
long  vista  of  bright  shapes  clamoring  to  be 
carved  for  the  comfort  and  delight  of  the  world. 
Hastily  he  slipped  down  from  his  father's  arms 
to  his  own  placeon  the  hearthrug,  and  brought  out 
his  little  box  of  clean  chips  from  beneath  the  sofa. 
[247] 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

A  great  company  of  living  beings  was  hidden 
there,  waiting,  waiting  in  the  wood.  Samuel 
looked  up,  and  announced  with  jubilation,  "  Self 
—  make — all!"  He  pondered  a  moment  on  his 
next  subject.  The  carving  of  a  cat  had  ended  in 
disaster;  let  us  then  attempt  the  dog,  the  friend  of 
man,  not  the  heartless  watcher  by  his  fire.  The 
child  passed  a  thumb  over  the  knife-edge,  as  the 
elders  do,  then  chose  a  block,  and  addressed  him- 
self to  it.  "Dog."  No  more. 

The  parents  looked  at  each  other,  understand- 
ing profoundly  that  Samuel  was  no  longer  a  child 
of  three.  Overnight,  he  had  become  a  boy  in  the 
fourth  year  of  his  age.  In  mingled  joy  and  anx- 
iety they  perceived  also  that  for  a  certainty  their 
wish  had  been  granted;  there  was  an  artist  in  the 
family.  And  an  artist,  they  supposed,  would  have 
his  isolations,  and  tremulous  expectancies;  his 
aspirations,  too,  and  perhaps  his  anguish  in  high 
enterprises,  "None  done."  But  joy  alone  radi- 
ated from  Samuel  and  his  shining  spirals.  From 
the  sorrow  of  a  dream  never  to  be  finished  he  had 
passed  to  the  incalculable  rapture  of  a  vision 
newly  begun.  "Dog,"  he  murmured,  "dog." 
He  knew  that  the  creature  was  lying  low  there  in 
the  chip,  just  for  the  express  purpose  of  being 
[248] 


The  Artist's  Birthday 

summoned  forth  by  him,  Samuel.  In  his  abound- 
ing bliss  he  had  time  to  bestow  on  his  parents 
three  words  to  describe  what  he  was  about  to 
make;  and  he  spoke  these  words  as  if  they  were 
three  priceless  jewels, "  Beau  —  bello  —  beautiful!  " 


THE  END 


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